Hot Ice (18 page)

"How in the bloody hell is he keeping something
this
big,
this
quiet?" Hunt frowned. Friday the thirteenth. New York? They'd checked, double-checked, and triple-checked. Nothing significant was scheduled for that date.

"We have a time," Wright told the team. "Confirmed. Friday, October thirteenth. Eleven thirty-three GMT."

"Eleven
thirty-three
? That's pretty goddamned precise." Hunt rubbed his jaw. "Is this from a reliable source?"

Wright's chuckle was a bit rusty. "In our line of business? We've been contacted by our female informant on the inside. Who the hell knows what ax she has to grind, but it's all we've got, so let's go with it until we learn different."

The mystery woman had been tipping them off for several months. Never
enough
, however. She was always extremely vague. And extremely frightened. They speculated that she worked in the Morales household in a trusted position.

"She didn't give us a location?"

"Negative."

"Then let's hope to hell she contacts us again. Soon. In the meantime, let's say
not
East Coast time," Hunt suggested. "Central? Mountain? I doubt it, but check, would you? Pacific Time… that would make it 3:33. We've already looked at San Francisco. But look again. But if I were a betting man—"

"And a religious zealot," Max added.

"Las Vegas," Hunt finished, coming to the same conclusion at the same time as Wright and Max.

"I'm on it as we speak." Through his headset, Hunt heard the computer keys clicking from Michael Wright's end.

"My gut tells me Vegas is
Mano's
Friday the thirteenth target," Hunt repeated. He
knew
he was right. And so did the other members on the team. Las Vegas was exactly Morales's twisted cup of tea. A large city filled with sinners. Perfect. Perfectly twisted. Hunt felt a familiar sensation in his gut.

He didn't know
how
he was this sure, but God help them all, he was positive. "He's going to do a long-range, soft-target launch from somewhere in southern Africa."

"Christ." Wright was typing furiously in the background, sending the intel to relevant operatives to confirm or deny. "Inputting the data… sounds far-fetched as hell. But my educated guess is, you're right… Sending it to…" He spoke away from his mic. "Yeah. Okay. Done. We're on it." Then, back with the team, he continued, "I've put in to take inventory of guidance chips and hardware."

Mano del Dios
had a long-launch guidance missile hidden, and hidden bloody well.
Somewhere
in Africa.

"Bloody hell," Hunt said, more to himself than the others. "The son of a bitch is just crazy enough to try it. But a seven-thousand-nautical mile air strike? Who has the necessary tech knowledge to make that happen?"

"We'll find out," Wright told him, not a shred of doubt in his voice.

Chapter Sixteen

Hunt watched Taylor through the partially open door, not distracted at all by the length of her pale, smooth legs as she propped her crossed ankles on the seat opposite and stared out of the large porthole.

"We're ready to move at a moment's notice," he told Wright as she lay her head back and closed her eyes. "Have the rest of my team deployed to Zurich. As soon as we have the disks, we'll transmit."

"Forty-eight hours," Wright reminded them unnecessarily. "Aries, I need you in Poland ASAP. Let me know when you're clear."

Max gave Hunt a shrug. "Will do."

"What are you going to do with the woman once you have the disks?" Bishop wanted to know.

"Hand her over to Interpol when I—we're done with her," Hunt told him flatly. "Or whoever else wants her. I'm sure the list is a mile long."

"And on that list," Max reminded him without inflection, "are
Mano del Dios
and possibly Black Rose. She'd better hope Interpol gets to her first."

"Interpol," Bishop inserted as he rose. "At least she'd have a fighting chance with them." He walked into the head and closed the door.

"
If
that tango connection has been cleaned up," Hunt remembered, feeling a distinct chill. Another T-FLAC group was following leads on an Interpol/terrorist connection. Releasing her would be certain death—but he doubted she'd want their "protection" anyway. Too damned independent for her own good, Taylor Kincaid wouldn't thank anyone for trying to save her.

Not his bloody problem, Hunt cautioned himself. But the thought of her in the hands of either the Black Rose or
Mano del Dios
bothered him a great deal. "We could send her to Montana, I suppose," he said reluctantly, annoyed that what happened to her—one way or the other—impinged on him at all. By suggesting she be sent to HQ in Montana, he was taking tacit responsibility for her safety. Hell. When had he started to feel responsible?

"I'll start the ball rolling," Wright offered. "Control out."

"She's going to be trouble," Max told Hunt blandly, removing his earpiece. Trouble, Max's eyes told him, for both him
and T
-FLAC.

"
Going
to be?" Hunt said dryly, tossing his headset onto the table as he stood. "She's a pain in the ass now."

"Remember
the Curse
," Max said quietly.

Right
, Hunt thought grimly.
The fucking, always there, not to be bucked, Curse. Let's never forget
that. "Not applicable," he assured Max.

"
Always
applicable," Max shot back.

Hunt shook his head. Max was way off. "Are you nuts? I've known the woman for all of five seconds. Love isn't even close to the emotions I feel when I'm around her. Pissed, frustrated, hell—
homicidal
—would all be more appropriate."

"Horny." Max smirked.

Hunt wouldn't deny the obvious. He wasn't a monk. "That too. And perfectly controllable."

"It's a lot easier to control a hard-on than it is your emotions."

"Is that a fact?" Hunt responded, forcing a lightness into his tone he didn't feel. For the last several months "easy" wasn't what he'd call his control over his irrational lust for Taylor Kincaid. Since the moment he'd met her he'd wanted her.

He had only eight more hours of this sheer physical torture to endure, and then she'd be gone. He could do it. He
would
do it. Lust was eminently controllable. He knew he was very good at compartmentalizing his emotions.

Lust was controllable.
Love
wasn't.

Which he'd learned the hard way, and to his eternal detriment.

Twenty-nine-year-old Sylvie had been tall, blonde, sophisticated, and five years older than Hunt when they'd met at a boring fundraiser in D.C. He'd just obtained his law degree from the University of London and returned home to D.C. to visit his father. He'd had a month's vacation due before reporting to T-FLAC headquarters in Montana for briefing.

It hadn't taken the entire month for Hunt to fall in love with the beautiful young law clerk. He'd been crazy in love with her halfway through their first week together. He and Sylvie had been inseparable—

"You've already tried bucking
the Curse
," Max reminded him, reading his mind as only a good friend could. "It almost killed you."

"
Almost
being the operative word," he replied. "The experience inoculated me. I've been completely immune ever since. Besides, in a few hours the situation will resolve itself." The plane would land in Zurich,
she'd
hand off the disks, and he'd never see her again.

Max gave him a steady look. "Only fools and the terminally arrogant think they can beat it."

"Those words are permanently engraved in my DNA," Hunt assured him.

"What curse?" Bishop asked, coming out of the head.

"The L-O-V-E Curse," Max spelled out for the younger man, still looking at Hunt. "The most deadly curse of all. One of the reasons we do our frikking job so well is because we're all alike. We have a need to control our environment. And we
do
that with the work we do. Until we—"

"Until we're fool enough to bring a woman into the equation," Hunt inserted. "Then we're screwed. There's not a bloody thing a man can control about love. It's messy, painful, traitorous, and unstable."

"Love is the Curse," Max said. "It's a no-win situation, and the sooner you wrap your brain around
that
one, kid, the better off you'll be."

Bishop frowned, glancing from Hunt to Max and back again. "There
are
exceptions…"

They both shook their head at his naïveté. "Famous last words," Hunt said. "Famous bloody last words.
We
said and believed them ourselves—once." Hunt mock-saluted Max and strode out of the aft cabin.

He had eight hours to kill.

Taylor was curled up, fast asleep in her seat. Obviously she hadn't been the least bit bothered by his scrutiny during the briefing. Skirting a low table, Hunt swiveled the chair opposite so it faced hers, then sat down.

He stretched out his long legs and rested his clasped hands on his flat belly, allowing himself a few quiet uninterrupted moments to study her when she didn't have all her defenses up.

One could learn a surprising amount from observing someone as they slept. A person who had nothing to hide, who felt safe, might sleep spread out. Open. Vulnerable.

She
lay curled like a child, a hand beneath her cheek, the red dress hiked high on her hip, exposing miles of creamy leg. She looked innocent lying there. The girl next door. Only better. More like the centerfold next door.

Why the bloody hell did he have to keep reminding himself that she wasn't the innocent? When she was captured—as she most assuredly
would
be one day—she'd be thrown into jail for a good twenty or thirty years.

Innocent she wasn't.

Why would a woman like this—an exquisite sophisticate, who must have men slavering at her feet like whipped dogs, men who would give her anything she could possibly want or need—
steal
?

What drove her? What motivated her? He guessed the answer lay in Zurich. His gut told him she was still hiding something.

The steady drone of the engines relaxed him. In a while he'd get up and read through her file again. In the meantime he could look his fill. She was a dangerous woman, Taylor Kincaid. He'd do well to remember
that
, instead of… other things.

Chapter Seventeen