Femme Fatale (7 page)

Second step…a pause for some of those delicate goodies. Beth allowed herself a small glass of a full, sweet red wine, drinking slowly and trying to eat slowly as well. Hard when her stomach was so empty. Polite conversation murmured around her, and the winery rep circulated through the crowd passing out the same classy brochures
available on the tables. He came up on her just as she popped a tiny sandwich in her mouth. She managed a quick, surreptitious chew-and-swallow, expressed her delight at the winery and the wine, and inquired about their shipping policies. He handed her a second brochure with a little less gloss and a little more content. Pleased with his conquest, he moved along to the couple beside her, who had been sipping with such careful concentration and serious effort that Beth pegged this for their first wine event. Good. They would keep the winery rep busy for a nice long time, during which she could choose her moment, hitch her skirt up, and…

Crawl under the tables.

Jason’s eyebrows climbed a notch as he saw his Mystery Lady spy ease to the edge of the room; her head disappeared, sinking from sight. He left the antechamber and coatroom to enter the tasting room for the first time, ducking through the other visitors just in time to see Beth’s leg withdraw out of sight beneath the table.

A quick check reassured him that no one else had seen her. If he hadn’t been watching her and her specifically, he wouldn’t have noticed, either. As it was he’d gotten a grand sight of a grand leg, and could be pretty sure of one thing: she was looking for something.

Something of Lyeta’s.

With care, he followed her progress down the line of tables, watching as the long, elegant tablecloths gave a delicate shiver here, wafted in a nonexistent wind there. It occurred to him…

They still had to talk. And he wanted to talk to her without fighting her, chasing her or drawing the attention
of the nondescripts. He eyed the last table, eyed the crowd and waited for the moment—inevitable, really—that someone, somewhere in the room, dropped a wineglass.

He was under the table, sitting cross-legged and casual, by the time she paused in her examination of the above her and spotted him, her tiny flashlight wavering. Ahh, an expression to treasure. The way her deep turquoise eyes, shadowed to darkness by the cavelike circumstances, widened with startled surprise. The way her mouth, sleek and quirky and darkened with some kissable shade of lipstick, dropped open just long enough to betray the depth of that surprise. And even the twinge of annoyance that flared across her face and dropped away, replaced by a distinct refusal to be impressed. And the way he was in the perfect position to look right down her—

“Lovely dress,” he said, keeping his voice low although he wasn’t terribly concerned about being heard over the general conversation level in the room. “Shame to use it as a dust mop.”

“I’m testing the material for durability,” she said, not missing a beat now that she’d gotten her initial astonishment under control. She flicked her flashlight back up at the underside of the table. “It’s a private test. Go away. You’re disturbing my dust.”

Even as she spoke, another look crossed her face, one that had nothing to do with him at all. She turned the flashlight on the floor between them, then on the space she’d already traversed. “Damn!”

He passed a fingertip over the floor directly in front of him; it came up dusty. “I don’t know why you’re here,” he said, “and I don’t know why you’re
here,
under-the-
table here, but…it doesn’t look like anyone else has been arranging assignations under the wine lately.”

She gave him a grumpy look, aiming the flashlight back up at the table. “Neither have we. This is a one-woman show. I believe I told you to go away.”

“I don’t believe I ever said I would.”

She scowled fiercely at him. “You’re in my way. You’re quadrupling my chances of being caught under here. Go—”

“No.” He really regretted it that time; he’d heard an edge of desperation in her words.

“Don’t be zwitterionic!”

He raised an eyebrow at her. “Very nice,” he said in approval. “I shall have to go home and look that one up.”

“Don’t bother,” she grumbled. She tugged at the shawl she’d flung over one shoulder as it started to slip, and shoved it back into place. “It’s not right. It just sounded good.”

“Look,” he said. “This isn’t a good time or place—I know that. But I had a good time and place, and you ran off.”

“It was your time,” she said. “
Your
place. And your conversation. You were the one who ended that conversation, if you recall. I made you an offer and you refused.”

He shrugged. “Circumstances change.”

“They do, don’t they?” she said. “If you think I can’t change
these
particular circumstances, think again. That was a one-time offer. You don’t get close enough to pull out your favorite toy handcuffs. Not again.”

“You blew my favorite toy handcuffs apart,” he said crossly. “And…I may have been wrong to turn you
down, damn it.” Damn it, because he was on the verge of closing the rule book and leaving it behind. Bear had said to bring her in…that was as good as orders.

But Bear wasn’t here now. Bear hadn’t seen this woman in action. Bear hadn’t seen her fiery spirit channeled into a sizzling glare and aimed his way. Even if Jason somehow dragged Beth all the way back to the hotel room, the delay between asking the questions and getting answers would be…significant.

Now she eyed him warily, waiting to see where he was going with the conversation—but only for a moment. Then she turned her attention back to the table, running the flashlight along the inside edges of the area over his head…and sighing, turning the flashlight off.

“Not there?” he asked, and then, at her warning look, added, “Never mind. Let’s just get out of here, and then we’ll talk about…talking.”

“Wishful thinking,” she said, but tucked the flashlight away in her small handbag and gathered up her skirt so she could move.

Leaving the little refuge was trickier than sneaking into it; peeking out from beneath offered only a limited view of what transpired in the room at large. With two of them, it was perhaps inevitable that someone noticed them emerging. Noticed Jason, and as Beth unfolded those long, limber legs of hers, he bent over her in a solicitous motion that allowed him to snag her earring right out of her ear. She opened her mouth for instant protest, but it only took the faintest hiss through his teeth to shush her. As she stood, he gallantly handed her the earring—though not before displaying it to the several people who had turned to stare at them in surprise. “Here it is,” he said,
as would a triumphant hero. “Hard to believe it bounced all the way back there.”

“Yes,” Beth said through slightly gritted teeth. “It is, isn’t it?” She plucked it out of his hand and expertly replaced it in an absent way that made Jason wish he’d been the one to brush her hair aside, to gently touch her ear.

Maybe that was the reason for what happened next…or maybe Beth was just very, very good at playing a crowd. She turned to him and said, “Thank you, sweetheart,” and if she was still gritting her teeth when their lips met, Jason found no sign of it. Instead he found lips that were warm and pliant, a reality of sensation and emotion. The light, public kiss instantly turned deep and hungry, full of motion and then the light caress of tongue against lip, and then she
nibbled—

Almost desperately, Jason broke away from her. Another move like that and he would have pulled her in close and tight, never mind the crowd and the circumstances and the fact that this woman was more than likely to use his reaction for her own purposes.

Bear would never let him live this down.

Bear will never know.

He became aware of a light smattering of polite applause; he looked away from Beth’s dazed but wary expression and found they had indeed gathered an audience. Rather than deny the moment, he took it with rakish aplomb, offering the room at large a little bow of acknowledgment. When he glanced back at Beth, he saw she’d carefully arranged her shawl to cover both breasts. He stopped his instant impulse to reach for her, to pull
her against him and feel the reaction she so casually concealed, and let her feel what she’d raised in him.

That’s not what this is about.

It was a tiny voice, a sane little thing, but it hit him like a splash of cold water.
Thank goodness.
As Beth took a deep breath, she touched a chagrined finger to her lips and said, “Perhaps I’d better go reapply my lipstick.” Playing to the crowd, just as he’d done, and getting a light ripple of laughter for her troubles.

Something inside him tightened with disappointment. Her creative self, coming through. Dancer…
performer.

Then again, it was just as well. One of them needed to be able to think, and it didn’t look like it was going to be him.

B
eth couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t
believe
it. “Was that necessary?” she snapped at Chandler as she wrapped her borrowed shawl more tightly around herself. Smiling at each other, playing their suddenly assigned roles, they’d made it to the antechamber and now had some privacy.
Not enough.
With a jerk of her head, she indicated that they should go outside. Chandler grabbed up his jacket from the row of coats, a heavier thing than the oilcloth and more appropriate for a motorbike in the chilly evening, and followed her out.

The door had barely closed behind them when he said with indignation, “
You
did it.”

She turned on him just long enough to fling a glare his way, then took a quick detour into the landscaping to rescue her sling pack and jacket. “What’re you
talking
about? I—”

I did.
At least, every bit as much as he had. It had just seemed so natural. Damn it. She emerged from the bushes
with her glare intact, and jerked her squall parka on right over the shawl. She hadn’t expected to see that stuffed-shirt expression of his traded in for something more like chagrin and resignation.

“Look,” he said. “I’ve made a real dog’s dinner of this. I lost Lyeta Denisov for a matter of moments, and I’ll be damned if she didn’t get killed on me. And you were there…”

“Don’t remind me,” Beth said, feeling as sour as she sounded. “I
was
there, and she got killed anyway. I watched that spot for hours…they must have been in place before I got there. I don’t know how…maybe they had a bug on her. They seem to find me easily enough.” A broad path covered with chipped wood footing led away from the building; Beth discovered they had headed for it in silent accord, neither having given it much thought. Neat rows of grapevines stretched out before them, rustling slightly in the breeze.

After a moment of silence, Chandler said abruptly, “I don’t believe it was you anymore. Who killed her, I mean.”

“Well, thank you so much for that. I presume it wasn’t my offended protests that convinced you.”

“No,” he said, a matter-of-fact honesty she could appreciate. With the entry light of the visitors’ center behind them, the moon provided their only light. It softened the hard lines of his face, and revealed his thoughtfulness as he glanced at her. “Your old CIA records. And what I’ve seen of you so far. You’re right…you wouldn’t have done such a sloppy job.”

“Nice to have gotten that out of the way,” Beth said, but the moonlight had softened something in her, too. “But you’re still after me.”

“After you?” he said. “No. Wanting a conversation with you, yes.”

“Whether or not
I
want the conversation,” she said, and stuck to her original definition.
“After me.”

“Better me than your friends from the hotel.” He stopped walking, putting a hand on her arm so she turned to look at him. “What’re they after? If they wanted to take you out, they’d have done it by now.”

She raised an eyebrow at him, counting on the moonlight to show him her entire
excuse me?
expression.

He gave her a sudden grin, a damned charming, cocky grin. “They’d have tried harder, at least. No, they want—”

“What you want, probably,” Beth interrupted, preferring it to the speculation. Charming and cocky. Just what she needed.

He took a step closer to her, and the cockiness faded into something more serious. “Talk to me. This morning you said we were on the same side—”

“I said we
might
be.”

“And I think we are. Whatever you’re looking for, whatever
they’re
looking for…I’d rather they don’t get there first. How about you?”

Beth put her fingertips against her closed eyelids, rubbing gently. To trust, not to trust… Barbara had said to work with him. But that didn’t mean at the expense of losing the keycard to MI6. Beth had to get the card to Barbara, and then Stony Man could decide what to share with its allies. Finally she said, “I’m not sure what they want. I’m guessing it’s just to confirm what I know, and what I’ve passed along
before
they kill me. They don’t
need
me—they seem to have their own information sources.” Egorov, no doubt. The advantage of being in
place before Beth got here, maybe even before Lyeta got here.

“Do you know who they are?” Chandler said, pushing just a little too hard.

She opened her eyes to give him a steady look. “No.” And she didn’t. Until she heard from Barbara, she had nothing but guesses.

And for all she knew, she had a message waiting. Too much time had passed—getting here, fruitlessly searching the tables, wasting time in the most romantic setting known to man with the least romantic conversation she could think of. She gave a little shake of her head, knowing it would mean nothing to him. It was time to return to her snug little theater storage room and reassess where this mission stood.

Standing there in this most romantic of places, a handsome man beside her, dressed as she was for an evening of wine tasting and classy social flirting, and she was about to make her escape to the dark, eccentrically crowded warren of a theater. I must be crazy, she thought. Except she didn’t know if it was because she wanted to
go,
or because she wanted to
stay
—to stay with this man who kept trying to reel her into his MI6 lair.

Her stomach, fed only with a few dainty morsels and half a glass of wine, had no such waverings; it knew exactly what it wanted. More. More food, more drink, time to digest. It growled. Loudly. The breeze in the grapevines was no match for it.

Somehow, Chandler did not laugh—though Beth saw it lurking in the way his eyes crinkled at the corners, and in that little twitch at the corner of his mouth. He said, “Come with me. Along with the trouser press, the hotel offers room service. Not only that, it has running water.”

“The three stooges found me there once already,” Beth
said without thinking, and then realized how much she’d revealed with the comment. That she was considering it. That she wanted it. Food, a chance to contact Barbara, maybe even a real shower instead of a paper-towel sink-bath in a maintenance closet. That Jason Chandler came along with the room…something to deal with later.

“They didn’t find the room…and they won’t. Not even if they identified me in the lobby.”

“I doubt they did that,” Beth said, turning to head back for the visitor center. Still undecided, but moving forward with the faith that she’d make the right choice when the time came. “I think their heads were spinning too hard.”

“A possibility,” he said, sounding cheerful about it. They walked in silence for a few moments, until they reached the visitor center and went right on past it, into the parking lot and up to the yellow motorbike. Chandler asked, “Anything else stashed in those bushes you want to grab?”

“I’ve got it all,” she said, surprised at how tired she sounded.

So was he. There was no mistaking it under the single parking lot light that replaced the moon. Surprised, and…concerned. “Beth,” he said, “I know we’re on different teams. Our goals might not be the same. I know there are things you’re not telling me, and you can be damned sure there are things I’m not telling you…but what I
am
telling you is the truth.”

“Mmm,” she murmured, thinking about the bus schedule and thinking she probably wouldn’t have to wait too long to grab a ride back into town, and then looking up to find that those gray eyes of his weren’t cold at all and suddenly wondering how she’d ever thought they were.

Reason enough to turn around and walk the other way.

As if he read her mind, Chandler slowly reached for
the small pannier on the motorbike, not taking his eyes off her as he unlocked and opened it…to pull out her fanny pack.

He offered it to her.

“You searched it,” she said.

“Yes.” He hefted it slightly. “But left it as it was.”

Wyatt.
With as much restrained dignity as possible, she accepted the fanny pack and knew instantly from its heft that the Sig was still in place.

“Nill-Grips, all right,” he said, with some admiration, smart enough not to get pushy on top of the gesture of trust he’d just offered her. “You weren’t having me on about the sixteen-round clip? Given that they only come in ten or fifteen.”

She gave him her own version of a cocky smile. “If you use a follower from a ten-round clip, you can get sixteen snug little bullets in the fifteen-round clip.” And boy did it come in handy if you were up against someone who counted up to fifteen and then thought they had that instant of safety it takes to reload.

He caught the implications immediately and grinned back at her. And then, after just the right pause, he sat on the bike and said, “Come back with me. No handcuffs this time.”

After the slightest of hesitations, she said, “Oh, darn,” and swung her leg over the bike.

Bliss.

Nice warm hotel room, nice soft bed…

But not yet.

Beth dropped parka, shawl, and sling pack onto the bed. She prowled around the room, noting the closed laptop on the desk, the closed suitcase in the corner, the absence of personal items that might normally be scattered around
the room. A glance in the bathroom showed her a tidy, zippered shaving kit. Everything ready to go on a moment’s notice…nothing to reveal any smidgen of a clue about the room’s occupant.

The room itself was as advertised, down to the tea maker and trouser press. Not to mention the hair dryer, the thick, luxurious bathrobe hanging in the closet, and shampoo and soap enough to wash off even this day. The king-size bed was covered with a puffy quilt, the drapes came in a three-tiered layer of sheers, liners and gorgeous brocade, and the wall hangings weren’t even bolted down in an obvious manner.

Don’t let it suck you in, Beth told herself quite sternly. She looked again at the closed laptop, noting the lock and the empty PCMCIA slot that quite probably held a security keycard of its own in order to function. Just like the one she was looking for, only Lyeta’s copy was of Krystof Scherba’s master card. It was a keycard that would allow any laptop to function not only in Scherba’s network, but would give the operator the ability to manipulate and invade other systems in the network.

Ah yes, that did it. Brought her mind right back to the business at hand…and the fact that she was no longer in on it alone. She finished her circuit of the room, pulled all three tiers of drapes closed, and flicked on the main room light to find Chandler regarding her with a mixture of amusement and understanding. And…waiting. Waiting to see what she’d do next or, more specifically, just how difficult she’d be to work with.

“You know,” he said, “This could have gone much easier if you’d told me you were working an allied mission to start with.”

“I haven’t even said as much at all,” Beth told him smoothly, dropping to the bed to dig in her sling pack for
her PDA. She dug out the minuscule charger and plug adapter; might as well take advantage of the reliable source of electricity while she was here. “You’re assuming, because you know I was CIA. Well, look at your data again, wherever it is.
Was
means
was.
It doesn’t say a thing about what
is.
”

“Very well, then,” he said, sounding particularly annoyed and British. “Whatever you’re doing, at least nominally we’re working toward the same goals. And you had me pegged as MI6 right from the start.”

“That I did,” she murmured, dropping over the side of the bed to hunt for the outlet between the bed and the bedside table. Why hotels across the world had to hide their outlets behind furniture, she would never understand. She righted herself to find him looking a little taken aback at the view with which she’d presented him.

“It’s just…” he said, recapturing his thought. “If you’d
told
me…”

“Then what? You’d have done just the same. You play by the rules, Chandler. Every move you make confirms it. And the rules meant bringing me in to
talk
—SOP and you’ve confirmed it since. You only got off that kick once you’d learned enough to decide for yourself that I hadn’t killed Lyeta, and I’m betting you
still
have a yen to follow orders and let someone, somewhere, know I’m here with you. If you haven’t already.”

He looked stung. “I haven’t,” he said. “Blimey, I don’t know why you fiery creative types think it’s within your prerogative to assume you can predict other people’s decisions and then act on them.”

“What?” Beth said, entirely taken off guard—fiery creative types?—but not so much she couldn’t feel a flare of anger. “I’ll make the decisions I feel are in the best interests of accomplishing this…what I want to accomplish,
thank you! In
my
best interests. And who told you I was a dancer?”

That was stupid. Whatever files he’d gotten his hands on, of course. The CIA had not taken advantage of her talents as Stony Man had, but certainly it had been in her records.

But he gave a short shake of his head. “No one,” he said. “It’s the way…you move.”

Ah. She had to think about that.

She liked it.

She sighed. There was no denying her easy response to this man. He was handsome and self-confident—with good reason, as she’d seen—and by golly he had some charming moments. But by golly, just like every other handsome self-confident man who’d ever touched her life, he was rule-bound. And the thing about rule-bound men…they seemed to feel a duty to impose their rules on everyone, especially the free and easy souls who thought so differently than they did. Even, as she discovered when she’d been young and naive and not yet so superbly trained in the art of self-defense, when that impulse extended to smacking you around to make a point.

The CIA had gotten her after that, and the CIA had given her the tools to make it through this world on her own terms, tools honed by Stony Man and Barbara Price. Stony Man had given her the room to use all of her skills…and they valued that fiery creative streak in her. The same one that had gotten her out of more tight situations than she cared to count.