Femme Fatale (15 page)

It’s the hair,
Kylee thought.
Definitely the hair.
She hated having a bad-hair day, but having a bad-hair day at gunpoint was
so
much worse.

Deciding to up the ante before she lost all control, Kylee said, “There he is!” She screamed, pointed and dove for the floor.

One bullet cut the air over her head, missing her by scant inches.
Okay, good thing I wasn’t holding pat with the bluff.

Gunshots cannonaded inside the cabin. The trapped noise swelled to enormous proportions. Curses in a half-dozen languages rent the air.

Kylee scrambled across the floor on elbows and knees, driving herself forward with her head down. At least one of the gunners was stubbornly targeting her. Bullets chopped through the buffet table, smashing plates and knocking vegetables and bowls of dip to the floor.

Unfortunately for his teammate, the man’s targeting efforts also lined him up with one of the other security guys. A bullet caught the other guard in the hip and sent him crashing to the floor.

“More people are coming outside,” Barbara said over the headset.

Of course,
Kylee thought grimly.
Can’t wait around forever for the drowned woman to be scooped from the river. Maybe take in a gunfight as an intermission.
She was of the definite opinion that Creepstof Scherba didn’t know any decent people.

“Cease fire, damn you!” Mr. Mystery’s deep bass voice thundered through the crash of gunshots. “Cease fire!”

Kylee pushed herself up at the edge of the buffet island.
She took an F/X box and lobbed it over the table toward the man who had chosen to shoot at her. She saw his feet shift as he turned toward the device, then turned quickly away.

Probably thinks it’s a grenade,
Kylee told herself.

The gunfire stopped.

“It’s the woman!” Mr. Mystery roared. “Stop the woman!”

Everybody hates a tattletale,
Kylee thought. She closed her eyes and pressed the remote control.

In response, all the F/X boxes blew, filling the back end of the catamaran with light and thunder. There was enough noise to make most observers believe the boat was under attack.

Kylee rose into a sprinter’s position on her knuckles, then hurled herself forward. She stayed low as she charged for the door that let out onto the catamaran’s stern. She counted her steps, a habit that came out of her stunt training because everything there had to go by the numbers. Counting during action was second nature; first for safety during the gag, then for the cameras to make the director happy.

Only a few of the gunmen were on their feet. The rest of Creepstof Scherba’s guest list that had wandered to the catamaran’s stern in search of entertainment had dived to the floor. Most of them carried guns as well.

Kylee decided the computer cracker must have been giving weapons away as party favors. As she ran, she was forced to step on the bodies of the frightened people lying on the floor. She didn’t hesitate because the biggest risk was that she would slip and twist an ankle before she could get clear of the boat.

Five feet from the stern, she leaped into the air and spread her arms as she dived over the side. She kept the
dive shallow, quickly arching back up for the cloth bag tied to the boat’s ladder that contained the swim fins and the miniscuba she’d secured there when she’d come aboard.

By the time she had the scuba in her mouth, searchlights around the catamaran had flared to life and started tracking the river’s dark surface. She dove lower, swimming less than three feet from the bottom.

The light cones from the powerful searchlights illuminated fish swimming close to the surface, but they never touched her for more than an instant, a glance of contact that never allowed the men looking for her to find her.

Mick stood in the bow of the catamaran and stared into the dark water. Ellipses of yellow-white light from the boat’s searchlights skipped across the river water.

Twice, men from Scherba’s regular security team fired into the water. The bullets slapped against the water with flat cracks that let him know the 9mm rounds had ricocheted from the rolling river surface.

“Cease firing,” Mick snarled. Anger flooded through him, but it was a mixed thing. He was actually relieved the woman had gotten away. Even if she was a thief, hired by one of Scherba’s enemies, she didn’t deserve the fate Scherba would have had in store for her. From the talk he’d heard from the other security guards, Scherba wasn’t a man who suffered enemies long after they’d made a move against him. But Mick was most angry with himself because, if he’d been truly effective at his security post, the woman would have never set foot on the catamaran. She would have never become a danger to Scherba. Or a danger to herself.

“Over there!” one of the security guards yelled. He pointed his pistol and fired.

“Cease fire,” Mick roared again. “The next person who fires a weapon is getting his damned head busted.”

The regular security detail stared belligerently back at Mick. He knew he was confronting a pack of wolves, all of them needing only a moment of courage or a leader to turn against him.

“Stone.”

Glancing up, Mick saw Scherba standing on the deck above. “Yes, sir,” Mick said.

“I’m told we had an intruder aboard.” Scherba leaned on the bow railing and glared down.

“Yes, sir.”

“How did that happen?”

You parked us in the middle of the bloody river, mate,
Mick thought.
Left us exposed as all hell.
But he said, “She swam underneath the river and climbed up on the back of the boat during the confusion.”

Scherba scowled. “This is the quality of security I can expect?”

“You’re alive, Mr. Scherba,” Mick replied. “That’s what I guaranteed. If that changes, I’ll know I made a mistake.”

“Your humor is not appreciated, Stone.”

“No, sir. Probably not. But neither is the fact that I’m having to try to do my job tied up in the middle of this river like a sitting duck.”

By now Mick fully well intended to tender his resignation. The woman hadn’t been one of the hardcases that he’d turned away from Scherba three times in the past. Despite the fact that she was a damned thief, she hadn’t tried to kill him. If she’d carried a gun or a knife downstairs when she’d set off the flash-bang, he knew there was a good chance that he wouldn’t have survived. He’d
let himself get too distracted by that expanse of bare skin and soft curves.

“Did you see the person who boarded my boat?” Scherba asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Who was it?”

“A woman.” There was no reason to hide that fact from Scherba. Other security guards had seen that.

“You didn’t recognize her?”

“No, sir.”
But I will if I ever see her again.
She was that kind of woman: the kind that left an indelible mark in a man’s mind.

Flashing blue lights strobed over
Guilty Pleasures
as a Czech police boat cruised over to them. The loud-hailer barked. Even though Mick didn’t understand the language, he understood the intent. He dropped the pistol to the deck and raised his hands. He wasn’t worried about the authorities, though. Prague law enforcement was corrupt enough and Scherba was wealthy enough that tonight would be only a matter of a few hours’ haggling before an agreement on a price to drop all charges was made.

He stared out at the river, knowing he wouldn’t see the woman, but unable to keep from looking for her all the same. Memory of the soft and supple body on top of his wouldn’t leave his thoughts. The pain in his bruised face reminded him how good she’d been. He grinned.
You’re a looker all right, sheila. Just make certain you stay the hell away from my operation.

Even as he thought that, though, Mick knew that the woman wouldn’t if she hadn’t gotten what she had come for. Before coming up the staircase after her, he’d unhooked the sat-phone plugged into the notebook computer. Whatever program had been running hadn’t finished.

She hadn’t gotten whatever she had come for. If she had any sense, she’d stay away. But she hadn’t backed down, and Mick had the definite impression she wasn’t the kind of woman who would. That meant she would return, and she would find Scherba’s bloodthirsty crew waiting for her. They wouldn’t hesitate to kill her.

Mick hated the thought of that beautiful body getting savaged by bullets. He sighed in resignation, knowing what he had to do. Until he knew the woman had been properly warned off, he couldn’t leave the bodyguard detail with Scherba.

A
n hour later, Kylee stood under the hottest spray she could coax from the shower in the bathroom of her hotel. The hotel was billed as having old-world charm. In the three days that she had been there, Kylee had learned that description loosely translated to “ancient and rusting and relatively overpriced.” But the studio was picking up the tab, she had an excellent view of the Vltava—and
Guilty Pleasures
—and the small café around the corner from the hotel served excellent pastries.

The water temperature never truly reached hot and she had to settle for a little more than lukewarm. Still, the shower was hot enough in the coolness of the room to make steam and that was at least psychologically uplifting even if the chill persisted.

She leaned on her palms against the tile wall and let the water cascade down her back. Mr. Mystery continued to claim her thoughts, filling her with desires and needs and images that danced unwanted through her head. Ac
tually, they weren’t unwanted, she had to admit. Since she’d first stepped into the shower and started having them, she had elaborated on them. She’d slowed down the action in Scherba’s stateroom, relived the pressure of Mr. Mystery’s body against hers.

And the want and need that the confrontation had instilled in her deepened into a bout of near-frustration. She took a deep breath, then tilted her head up into the gentle spray. Okay, maybe the explosive contact with Mr. Mystery had driven her pulse up and turned into a first-class case of frustration. It had happened before.

That was a lie and she knew it. She’d been attracted to men she’d known before, and even drawn to some of them like a heat-seeking missile after a few days of working with a guy who was confident and good at what he did.

But she’d never before felt a full-blown surge that had so totally made her senses come alive like this one. Standing there in the shower, she could have sworn she felt the individual beads of water tracking down her flesh. It was tempting to think of them as Mr. Mystery’s fingertips.

Okay, frustration it is,
she told herself angrily.

Giving up on the shower, unable to steam the chill of the Vltava River from her bones or get Mr. Mystery’s memory to fade the hell away, Kylee toweled off and put her hair up. In the bedroom, she pulled on a soft cotton Los Angeles Dodgers baseball jersey she’d swiped from one of her younger brothers six months ago when he’d made the mistake of leaving his laundry out while she’d been visiting her parents.

Kylee curled up in the huge four-poster bed and stared at the rugged face on the notebook computer monitor.
What kind of person are you, Mr. Mystery?

Upon returning to the hotel room after hauling herself from the river, Kylee had accessed the remote Web site
that the Stony Man intelligence people had established for her so she could review the people and the events she had seen, then add details or ask questions as necessary. She had flipped through the video footage taken by the button-cam she’d worn on the wet suit until she’d found a good still of the man.

She could still hear his smoky voice, Australian accent and all.
And your hair is wet, Goldilocks. Meaning you’re my girl no matter what little story you decide to trot out.

She stared at his image on the notebook monitor, at the square-cut chin, blue eyes, and chestnut ringlets. Fast and dangerous and dashing. That definitely summed him up, but—remembering the way their bodies had been briefly locked together—other qualifications came to mind as well. The wet suit had been formfitting, and the slacks had been thin.

Too bad, Mr. Mystery,
Kylee thought.
It would have been fun to give you another chance.

The line of thinking was unusual for Kylee. A few guys had been of interest to her, but she’d found most of them too shallow to be interesting, too insecure because of her profession to hang around, or too married or otherwise involved to be available. Even the good, decent guys her brothers, two sisters-in-law, and her mother had tried to set her up with had lacked that spark to keep her interest. True to her nature and her work in stunts and in spying, she’d always made a fast get-away.

Kylee didn’t lack for male friends. The stunt work and the real and deep friendships she had with her brothers made certain of that. Twenty-six years old, around the jet set of the movie crowd as well as down-to-earth guys who worked as set carpenters, studio horse wranglers, and guys who worked marine salvage, and she’d never found a special guy. Nobody had ever turned her world upside down.

Not that she was looking forward to the experience. She liked her life as it was, liked being able to make her own decisions.

One of her best friends—Sammi San Giacomo, a fellow stunt person—accused Kylee of being too unwilling to let someone sweep her away.

And maybe there was some truth in that. Every time Kylee had been vaguely interested in a guy, she’d seek—and find—a reason why he wasn’t Mr. Perfect.

You have your warts, too, Mr. Mystery,
Kylee told the image on the screen.
Number one: you’re working for the bad guys. I’ll bet there are plenty of others. Which we won’t be discussing.

Still there was something about the Australian security man’s rugged good looks that struck her in a way she hadn’t been struck before.

Must be that first impression,
she decided.
Peering over a gun barrel and all.

The satellite phone on the small nightstand by the bed rang.

Kylee picked the phone up and said, “Oz?”

“Oz?” Barbara Price asked.

“Great. Wise. All-Knowing. You know,
Oz.
”

“Funny.” The tone implied the nickname was anything but. “You’re still awake?”

“Yes. I gave up on soaking out the chill and settled for a good shampoo and some time well spent with a loofah sponge. I can still taste the river, though, thank you very much.”

“We have a problem.”

That got Kylee’s attention immediately. The satellite phone was heavily encrypted so she felt safe talking about events without masking identities or events.

“The notebook computer didn’t give us access to the files we were hoping for.”

Kylee took that in, knowing in the space of a heartbeat what that meant. “So we have to crash Creepstof Castle.” She sat up in bed, forgetting the chill that plagued her. A chance at further clandestine action focused her instantly.

Also, there was the added benefit of chancing another face-to-face with Mr. Mystery. The thought warmed her blood more than the shower did. She should have felt guilty, but she didn’t. For a brief moment, a vague unease touched her. He was good. She had barely gotten away. Then she smiled at the face on the monitor.
I can beat you, Mr. Mystery. I can get away from you again if I have to.

“Possibly. I’m working on getting another team into the area.”

“Whoa, Oz,” Kylee protested. “This is my gig. You brought me into this. I don’t play as a second-stringer.”

“You also don’t play a full-blown guns-and-ammo type op, Kylee.” Barbara’s voice sounded resolute. “You’re strictly finesse work. In and gone before the bad guys know it. The team I’m talking about shakes down the house.”

“Creepstof might not keep the information you’re looking for at the castle,” Kylee said. She hated the idea of being cut out of the mission.

“I know,” Barbara admitted. “That’s one of the reasons I haven’t reached for the other group of players.”

Kylee knew from experience that Barbara ran two or more wetwork teams, so-called because they handled the down-and-dirty and bloody business of counterterrorism that left behind body counts. Kylee had been an advance scout on three missions for those teams before.

She took a deep breath and blew it out. “If you want me sidelined, Oz, I’m sidelined. I’m a team player.” A stunt person had to be.

“I appreciate that,” Barbara said. “We’ll see. For the moment, I want you on the inside of the op.”

Mind flying, Kylee turned over the possible parameters of the continued op. “Getting close to Creepstof could be hard after tonight. The face-to-face with Mr. Mystery probably blew that out of the water.”

“I agree. However, there is another angle we can exploit.”

Staring at the rugged face on the notebook computer monitor, feeling a mild—and definitely unwanted—blush of arousal and interest, Kylee said, “Mr. Mystery.”

“Right.” The smile was audible in Barbara’s voice. “You might be able to get close to him.”

Now there was a delectable thought, if somewhat self-destructive. “I thought he was one of the bad guys.”

“That’s open to debate.”

“How much debate?”

“A lot. He’s cashing checks from a known technoterrorist.”

“Maybe he’s got a good heart.” Kylee smiled.

“We’ve identified him.”

Interest flared through Kylee.
A name for Mr. Mystery?
“So who is he?”

“Mick Stone.”

“Australian?”

“Very.”

“What’s his background?” Kylee asked.

“Covert ops for the CIA and a few other international players. Usually as a bodyguard. As good as we are, I don’t think we have it all. Yet. Interesting guy. I’ll forward his brief so you can look it over.”

“You want me to meet him?” The possibility brought
way
more excitement with it than it should have.

“If we can arrange a meeting.”

“I’ll need a cover ID,” Kylee said.

“We’re putting one together. I’m thinking along the lines of posing you as an international recovery expert specializing in stolen software.”

“The geekspeak might be hard to fake,” Kylee said. Her computer skills were decent, but she couldn’t sling programming tools or hardware specs well enough to fool anyone versed in those things. All things computer were Victoria Grayson’s specialty.

“Not with Stone,” Barbara said. “He’s strictly old-school. A by-the-book kind of operator. From his file, we know that he plays with security toys, but he doesn’t go that deep into tech.”

“I kind of got that from the Colt .45 he shoved in my face tonight. Another guy might have used an MP5 machine pistol, which would have made my F/X boxes just the last hurrah before he blew my lights out.”

“Tough guy talk?” Barbara asked.

Kylee rolled her eyes. “It’s the action film I’m in. I’ve been reading the script.”

“So,” Barbara said, “do you think Stone got a good look at you tonight?”

“Are you kidding? Everything aboard that boat happened too quickly.” Kylee still remembered the slap of bullets striking the buffet table and the floor as they missed her. “He won’t know me if I’m in a disguise.”

But I’ll know him.
She knew, at least for the moment, that she had the man locked into her personal radar. The trouble was, she also had him under her skin.

Now aren’t you the brazen one, darlin’?
Mick Stone thought as he stared at the long-legged blonde walking
over to the dark green sports car parked in the center of the street that had been blocked off by the American film crew. Bright interest flamed inside Mick, and he knew the feeling was more than just from confirmation that he’d found the beautiful thief who had engineered a dramatic distraction to steal aboard
Guilty Pleasures
in the dead of night.

The sheila filled out the catsuit in a way that left damn little to the imagination, and left him breathing just a little shorter and more than a little tight in the groin. Her shoulder-length blond hair whipped around her pretty face as she threw a leg through the open window of the Aston Martin Vanquish and clambered aboard.

You should have kept running last night when you started, darlin’. Just kept running and never looked back.
The fact that she hadn’t, that he’d been able to find her when she’d thought she was so clever, made him angry. She was a target, a beautiful target, but a target nonetheless, and she was acting as if she didn’t know that.

“Oh, look,” one of the young women in front of Mick said. She pointed excitedly. “There she is. There’s Destiny Cranston.”

“I see her. I see her.” The two young women hugged each other.

“Excuse me,” Mick said.

They both turned to look at him.

“Are you referring to the woman in the car?” he asked. “Is that Destiny Cranston?”

“No,” the brunette replied. “Destiny Cranston is sitting there by the director.”

“Ah.” Mick nodded. “Then who’s the blonde in the car?”

“Probably Destiny’s stunt double,” the other young
woman answered. “I was here yesterday and I saw Destiny wearing the same outfit.”

“Oh, I don’t think it was the same outfit,” the brunette said. “That woman is a lot heavier than Destiny.”

“If she’s any heavier,” Mick said defensively, “it’s only because she’s four or five inches taller than that little slip of a thing in the golf cart.”

“Destiny is a strict vegetarian,” the brunette said, obviously miffed.

“And you don’t know a healthy specimen of the feminine persuasion when you see one,” Mick retorted.

Definitely offended now, the two young women moved farther down the fire escape landing.

Mick ignored them, then got mad at himself. He wasn’t in the crowd to be remembered. A bodyguard served best when he or she was nondisruptive, when he or she could step into a principal’s life and take care of that person’s safety without interfering in day-to-day business. Normally he was one of the best in the craft at that.

But this mystery woman—damn her eyes and his own treacherous libido,
and
her lack of common sense to get gone while the getting-gone was good—had thrown him off his usual course of action.

Bruises covered his face where she’d kicked and hit him last night. Other bruises lined his legs and arms. She hadn’t been gentle, hadn’t pulled any punches, and she had brought the fight directly to him. He had to respect that.

The situation aboard
Guilty Pleasures
last night after her escape had been tense. Mick didn’t think he had Scherba’s trust anymore, not even a grudging amount of it. But the computer cracker had let him stay on in his bodyguard capacity, and hadn’t said a word when Mick had taken his normal time off this morning.