Femme Fatale (26 page)

Response spread low in her belly, warm and liquid. She flushed.

This was ridiculous.

Dangerous.

Delicious.

Her eyes slid shut. She strained for the sound of their
intruder, but all she could hear was the heavy rhythm of Bishop’s breath and the thud of her own heart. He nuzzled her ear. He kissed her neck, his lips lazy and warm, and she shuddered in delight.

She really should stop this. Stop him. But how? Her hands were trapped beneath her chest. She couldn’t speak. She didn’t dare struggle.

He rocked against her, higher, harder, nudging her legs apart, and she bit back a moan.

Okay. Enough was enough. She was not enjoying simulated sex on Primo’s dusty office carpet with his guard standing four feet away. All right, she
was,
but she was going to stop. Right now.

Wiggling one hand from underneath their bodies, she reached back until she touched Bishop’s muscular thigh. His warm, solid thigh. She pinched him, hard.

He grunted. “What did you do that for?”

She froze. He was going to get them killed. “Shh. He’ll hear you.”

“Who?”

“The guard.”

“The guard left.” Bishop brushed his lips against her temple. “About a minute ago.”

She levered off the floor so fast she cracked her head on his jaw. She sat up, rubbing her scalp. Bishop eased back, nursing his chin.

She eyed him bitterly. She hoped he hurt like hell. “I knew I couldn’t trust you,” she said.

“Considering I just saved your ass from the guard—”

She stood, brushing carpet fuzzies from her skirt. “Did not. I could have handled the guard.”

Somewhere down the hall, a door banged. Footsteps rushed.

Bishop went very still. “Good. Because he’s coming
back, and it sounds like he brought reinforcements. Get behind the couch.”

She lifted her head to glare at him. “I am not getting back behind that couch with you.”

Bishop swore. She ducked beneath the desk. He dived behind the couch.

And the door opened.

Tory’s heart pounded as the lights sprang on. This time the shoes had been joined by combat boots. This was a different kind of search. This time Primo’s guards weren’t investigating. They were hunting.

She hugged her knees. Maybe hiding under the desk wasn’t such a bright idea. Unless she could convince them she was waiting next to Primo’s office wastebasket to have sex with him when he returned? If a White House intern could do it…

The combat boots kicked aside the chair.

She took a deep breath, prepared to lie and determined to fight.

The guard’s knees bent as he stooped to look under the desk.

And Bishop jumped from behind the leather sofa and crashed through the window.

The other guard shouted in Spanish. Shoes and boots stomped broken glass on their way to the tall French doors. A machine gun rattled the night.

It was a chance.

It might be the only one she got.

Tory rolled from beneath the desk and scrambled across the carpet. Both guards had followed Bishop outside onto the balcony. She slipped through the open office door and sprinted down the dimly lit hall toward her bedroom.

H
e’d saved her life. She could hardly stand it. She certainly couldn’t let him get away with it.

“You left me,” Tory said.

Bishop slid through her balcony door. Dirt streaked his forehead. Sweat sheened his harsh face. His black suit was ruined.

“I did not leave you,” he said through his teeth. “I diverted the guards.”

Yeah, by jumping through a window and nearly getting himself killed. She was furious at the risk he’d taken. Who did he think he was? James Bond?

She arched her eyebrows. “By leaving me?”

He shut the louvers carefully behind him. “After this afternoon, Valcazar’s people were looking for a man in black.” He shrugged. “It seemed like a good idea to give them what they were looking for.”

“And if it hadn’t worked?”

“It did.”

He strolled forward into the light of her bedside lamp. His jacket wasn’t just creased, she noticed. It was torn. In fact—

Concern clutched her chest. She shifted the laptop off her knees. “Did they
shoot
you?”

“No.”

“But your jacket—”

He eased it off his shoulders. Winced. “They may have scored the suit.”

“And your arm.” She scrambled off the bed, horrified. He was hurt, and she was goading him. “You’re wounded.”

He smiled thinly. “Glass shards. I’m fine.”

“You’re bleeding. Let me see.”

The streak on his forehead wasn’t dirt. It was blood. Blood dotted his cuffs, smeared his beautiful hands. His strong, brown wrists were scored with thin slashes like defense wounds from breaking through the glass. Her heart cringed in helpless sympathy.

“Bathroom,” she announced firmly. “These need to be washed.”

His black eyes glinted. “Funny, I never figured you for the nurturing type.”

She refused to let that sting. “I never thought of you as the self-sacrificing type, either, so we’re even.”

She paused to flip a corner of the duvet over her computer and then dragged him into the bathroom.

He stood very close as she cranked on both faucets.

“I can sacrifice,” he told her quietly. “For the right cause.”

Tory squeezed water from a washcloth over his cuts. He was asking her—nicely—if the cause had been worth it. Maybe now she owed him an explanation for what
she’d been doing in Primo’s room. His blood swirled in the white basin and flowed down the drain.

She gave the washcloth another twist. “It’s a good cause. I was able to install a port in Primo’s security system that gives me access to his accounts. Not to steal,” she added hastily. Just because she wasn’t Florence Nightingale didn’t mean she was a thief. “I’m tracing illegal activity in his accounts.”

His mouth twisted.

Hot blood prickled her face. “What?”

“Angel, I don’t give a damn about Valcazar’s accounts. Although if you did something that makes life difficult for him, I’m glad. I was talking about getting you out of there in one piece.”

Oh. Oh, my. Did he mean that she was his “right cause”? That he cared about her?

She blotted his forearms. Several of the cuts still bled. At least there didn’t seem to be any glass stuck in them.

“I guess I should thank you for coming to my rescue, then.”

“I didn’t go to Valcazar’s office to rescue you.”

Right. He despised her. She had to remember that.

“Oh, yeah? Then what were you doing there?”

“His bedroom doesn’t have a balcony.”

“So?”

“So his office provided the best access.”

She arched her brows. “Access to what? It’s not like he keeps a thousand kilos of cocaine in his sock drawer.”

“I wasn’t searching for drugs.”

“What, then?”

“I was looking for Valcazar. I came here to kill him.”

Tory’s mouth dropped open. Her stomach lurched. “You can’t.”

Bishop smiled. Not a very nice smile, either.

She shivered. “Okay, maybe you could. But you shouldn’t.”

“Fond of him, are you?”

“No. God, no.”

She didn’t care about Primo. But she did care, too much, about Bishop. And acting outside the law he believed in to assassinate someone—even someone as slimy and deserving of death as the Colombian moneyman—would destroy him.

“It’s not about Primo,” she said. “It’s about you. You’re Mr. Law-and-Order. You don’t kill people.”

His black eyes were unreadable. “I don’t carry a gun for show. I’m authorized to use force when circumstances require it.”

“You’re not authorized to use anything down here,” Tory said frankly. “That’s why my agency was called in.”

“What is your agency?” He was wearing his impassive Indian face again. She couldn’t tell if he was skeptical or downright suspicious.

“What are your circumstances?” she countered.

He stripped his shirt off. Things were definitely heating up. “Are you offering to trade information, angel?”

Her gaze skimmed his hard, lean muscle, his flat, brown nipples. She swallowed. “I’m thinking about it.”

She escaped to the bedroom to dig antibiotic ointment out of her makeup bag.

Knowledge of Stony Man Farm, its existence and operations, was strictly on a “need to know” basis. Two years ago, Tory had been able to pull off her mission without Bishop learning a thing. But if he whacked Primo before she traced the flow of money from the terrorist Egorov, the drug lord’s assets would be frozen and she’d have no way to access Egorov’s millions. And she needed
that money. At least, she needed to make sure it didn’t fall into the wrong hands.

She uncapped the tube of antibiotic and began to smear it over the angry red slashes on Bishop’s arms.

“All right,” she said. “Let’s talk. You go first.”

Bishop smiled. “Not a chance.”

She attempted a pout. “Don’t you trust me?”

“Not that much.”

Smart man.

She dabbed on more ointment, trying not to notice how warm his skin felt beneath her fingers. “You have to trust me a little or there’s no point in my even talking.”

Bishop crossed his arms against his naked chest. “Try me,” he suggested softly.

Oh, boy.

Tory drew a deep breath.

“I work for a Special Operations Group that reports directly to the President.”

His dark brows drew together. “You’re a spy.”

“No. I track money. Drug money. Terrorists’ money. I find out where it came from and I take steps to keep it from being spent in ways that could hurt the United States. Kind of like a—” what would he find believable? reliable? “—an accountant.”

“You don’t look like any accountant I ever met.”

“You shouldn’t judge by appearances.”

“This from a woman who uses her looks to get what she wants?”

Ouch.

“I use the way I look. I’m not defined by it.”

His gaze clashed with hers, and then he nodded, ceding the point. “So what did you do before you became an accountant for Charlie’s Angels? Police academy? CIA?”

Her heart pounded. “Nope. I was exactly what you thought I was.”

“And what was that?”

“A cocaine-sniffing party girl with too much time on her hands and really bad judgment in boyfriends.”

His black gaze never wavered from her face. “Last time I checked hiring guidelines, that wouldn’t automatically qualify you for a government job.”

“It didn’t.” She struggled not to fidget. “Can we talk about you and Primo now?”

“No. I still want to hear about the boyfriend.”

Fine. She was over it. She could talk about it, if talking would get her what she wanted.

She needed Bishop’s cooperation. She was sorry to lose his good opinion, but, hey, she’d never had that anyway, right?

“My boyfriend sold drugs. To me. To my best friend. Until one night she got high and wrecked the car we were in. The car burned. She died. The boyfriend walked. And I spent about a year in recovery. Satisfied?”

“Not by a long shot.” Bishop’s voice was grim. “So that explains your scars.”

He’d noticed.

Her fingers fluttered to her throat. “Yes.”

“But not what you’re doing here.”

“I got—”

Depressed. Frustrated. Angry.

“—really bored in the hospital,” Tory said. “My best friend was dead. I didn’t want to see the boyfriend again, ever. And my friends, the people I thought were my friends, didn’t want to see me. I wasn’t fun anymore. Burns make you cranky. And I wasn’t pretty anymore. At least not for a long time. So—” She shrugged. “I made new friends. Online, where nobody could see me.”

Her tone was wry. Her words were matter-of-fact. But Bishop felt himself responding to the things she did not say, to the memory of pain that deepened her eyes, to the defiant courage that lifted her chin.

“Online,” he repeated. “You mean like in chat rooms?”

“Some. Sure. Why not? I had a lot of time on my hands.”

A year in recovery, she’d said. He tried to imagine it and failed.

“You were in bed the whole time?”

“No. They were ruthless at the burn center about getting us up for PT—physical therapy. But I couldn’t sleep at night.” Her smile flickered. “Bad conscience, I guess.”

Or pain. He’d read somewhere the pain from burn injuries was intense. Intolerable.

“So you surfed the Net.”

She nodded. “At first, it was a distraction. Well, and company. Only then I started to really get into it. I wasn’t just hanging out on bulletin boards with the crackers and freaks, I was taking classes in computer programming. I’d never done that well in school. But I was, like,
good
at this.”

He nodded. He was good at his job, too. He understood her satisfaction. “So when you were released from the hospital you applied for a job working with computers?”

“No. While I was still in the hospital, I hacked into a really badass computer system, and some very scary guys in suits showed up to offer me the choice between a job and jail. I took the job.”

Bishop scowled. “They threatened you?”

“They gave me an opportunity.”

“For what? Penance?”

She winced. But she recovered quickly. “Payback,”
she said. “Every time I stick it to a drug dealer, it’s payback for my friend. And for me.”

Revenge.

He understood that, too.

“Besides,” Tory added, “I like the rush.”

She would. She was still a junkie seeking a high. The only difference was she was a danger junkie now, addicted to thrills, seeking an adrenaline rush.

She rummaged in her open suitcase for a T-shirt and tossed it at him.

He caught it one-handed. “What’s this?”

“A shirt. Put it on. I sleep in it, so it should fit you.”

She slept in this? The short hem would barely cover her, her nipples would be visible through the thin white cotton.

Don’t think about her nipples. Think about what she’s doing here. “Don’t Valcazar’s girlfriends have to wear red lace or black leather or something?”

She shrugged. “I like to be comfortable in bed.”

She had to be kidding him. Or coming on to him. But nothing in her eyes or her voice suggested she was teasing in any way.

Under the flamboyance and the hair dye, could she really be that earthy? That unaffected?

Or was she just that good an actress?

He pulled the shirt over his head.

She watched, her hip cocked, her chin angled. “So now that I’ve bored you with my life story, why don’t you explain to me why you want to kill Primo?”

She never gave up. He wasn’t sure if that made her somebody he could respect or just a pain in the butt. Bishop adjusted the T-shirt over his holster in the back, trying to figure how little he could get away with telling her.

“You’re doing that silent Indian thing again,” she said. “Stop it.”

He nearly grinned, which surprised him. He hadn’t felt much like laughing for the past couple of weeks. “I’m after Valcazar for the same reason you are.”

She blinked. “You want the rush?”

“I want payback.”

“For what?”

“Valcazar killed somebody I used to know. Tortured and then killed him.”

“Who did he—” Her eyes widened. “The other agent. Two weeks ago.”

“You know about that?”

She tapped her gaudy earring, the one that held the tiny transceiver, with one red fingernail. “I hear things,” she explained. “But this isn’t the first time an agent has been killed in the line of duty. What makes it personal?”

“He made it personal,” Bishop said harshly. “Valcazar. He knew Benny and I worked together when I first joined the agency. Hell, I was best man at his wedding. Valcazar mailed me his hands.” Anger and grief rolled through him like a storm. “Tied. Benny’s wrists were tied. He was still wearing his wedding ring.”

She made a soft sound of shock and distress. “That’s terrible.”

He could not meet the sympathy shining in those wide, copper-brown eyes. Better to hold on to his rage.

And his resolve.

“Yeah,” he said tightly. “It was. Benny was a real by-the-book kind of guy. He taught me to follow procedure, to respect the law. And then this son of a bitch Valcazar throws in my face that within the law there’s nothing I can do to avenge Benny’s murder. My hands are tied, too.”

“I can help you to build a case against him. I can help you ruin him.”

“I don’t want him ruined,” Bishop said flatly. “I want him dead.”

She frowned. “I can’t help you there.”

“I don’t need your help.”

“No, I mean, I can’t let you do it.”

He let his gaze travel over her with insulting familiarity. She was a tall, stacked woman, curves and muscles packed on a five-eleven frame. But she was no match for him physically.

“You can’t stop me.”

She didn’t back down. “I did once.”

“You caught me off guard. It won’t happen again.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“I searched your bags, angel. No handcuffs this time.”

She stuck out her tongue at him.

He almost grinned. “Feel better?”

“No,” she said frankly. “I have a job to do. You’re making it harder.”

“I could make it easier. Why go after the bastard’s money when he’s going to be dead soon?”

“Because
this
bastard isn’t my primary target.”