Ice Cold (14 page)

There was an insane amount of jewelry. Enough to rival Elizabeth Taylor’s collection. Honey’s businesspeople were discreetly divesting her of it. However, that much glitter took a stupid amount of time to get rid of. The money had no meaning and wasn’t important. Rarely thinking about her net worth, Honey instructed her financial people to donate it, or the proceeds, regularly and anonymously to her pet charities. As long as it allowed her to protect Pollack and do a job she loved, she was happy.

“You keep your emotions pretty secure too, don’t you?” His expression was enigmatic, his eyes unreadable.

The only sound in the suite was the faint, distant hum of traffic on the street five floors below them, and the soft pulse of the air conditioner. Nevertheless, Honey felt as though a storm was brewing in the air around them. The atmospheric pressure seemed to have dropped, and unseen electricity pulsed and throbbed in the space separating them.

Pheromones, stupid, annoying pheromones.

Don’t,
she told herself firmly, before any foolish thoughts took root.

She snapped her computer closed and got to her feet. If he were sticking around, she’d work in her room. There wasn’t anything threatening about Navarro. Back at Jack’s house, she’d proven she was his equal in strength. “In this business, loose lips could get us killed. It’s an occupational requirement.”

He, too, got to his feet. Honey stood her ground as he walked toward her.
Stalked
. Slow, measured steps closing the space separating them. “I didn’t say you
talked
too much, Winston. I said you were tightly buttoned.”

She shouldn’t feel hurt he said what she already knew. “I’ve heard that my whole life.” She didn’t think she’d backed up, but the edge of the desk pressed hard against her butt. She braced suddenly clammy hands on the wood surface on either side of her hips to maintain her stance.

“What?” He stopped within an inch of her personal space. “What have you heard?”

“That I have no feelings. That I’m frigid.” She kept her voice even, with an effort.

“No.” His voice was rough as he slid one large, warm hand around her nape. “You’re not.” Fingers tangled in her hair, Navarro guided her head closer, so their mouths were a coffee-scented breath apart.

His lips curved, and her heart stopped beating for a second. Then heat suffused her body and her heart began to gallop. “Don’t—” She wrapped her hands around his muscled forearms where his shirt was rolled up, to shove him out of the way. To stop him. Instead, her fingers tightened in reflexive response to the stimuli.

Hot skin, the brush of crisp, dark hair rough against her palms. The smell of his skin, a combination of scentless soap and virile male, made her dizzy, weak at the knees.

Weak in the head if she let him. If she… If…

This close, she saw his eyes were a molten, bitter dark chocolate, short lashes dark and half-concealing the glint of heat. A sensual smile deepened the grooves bracketing his descending mouth. “Third one’s the charm.” His voice was thick.

Then his mouth was on hers, and Honey’s world stood still as her mind went blank.

ELEVEN

 F 
or a moment, Rafael thought Winston would wrench herself out of his arms, slap or shoot him, then read him the riot act. Instead, he felt the bite of her short nails as her fingers tightened on his forearms and her pale eyes gleamed with hunger before she closed them. She didn’t pull away. Her mouth was slick and hot and had the bite of lemon from the water she’d been sipping all day.

Sweet and sour Winston.

She stopped his heart.

His lips curved as he angled his head, slanting his mouth over hers and gliding his tongue behind her teeth to touch her tongue. She made an inarticulate sound in the back of her throat, her fingers tightening around his arms as her tongue dueled with his. His hand fisted in her hair, cool silk clinging to his fingers. She slid her hands up his arms to his neck. He pulled her the last few inches so their bodies pressed from chest to knee, kissing her as if he’d been starving and she was a six-course meal.

Brushing her smooth cheek with his fingertips as he kissed her, he felt her skin warm beneath his touch. Her breasts, full and plump, flattened against his chest, and through the thin cotton of his shirt, he felt the tight peaks indicating her arousal. Making him hotter still.

One hand still fisted in her hair, he slid his other hand down her side, curved it over her hip, then slid his splayed fingers around to cup her ass.

Her arms tightened around his neck, and she bit his lower lip, then licked the small sting, sending his libido into overdrive. He rubbed his hardness against her, mentally cursing layers of fabric that kept him from where he so desperately wanted to be.

He slid his hand partway down the back of her thigh, lifting her knee against his hip to gain better access to her heat. Hips pressed to his, she moaned softly, arching her neck as he reluctantly pulled his lips from hers, dragging in a shuddering breath, then dipping to lavish kisses along taut skin of her throat.

“You’re so beautiful, you take my breath away.” Rafe punctured each word with a kiss. Her skin felt hot beneath the glide of his mouth, damp from his kisses. He brushed his lips across the erratic, manic pulse at the base of her throat, inhaling the smell of her skin and the spicy scent of her arousal.

Hitching her up with one hand, he settled her ass on the edge of the antique desk then stood between her legs as he went back to feast on her mouth.

His comm rang from across the room. Discreet, but annoying as hell.

She wrenched her face away, leaving his lips damp and wanting. She blinked and the haze of desire cleared. “Better get that.”

“Hold that thought.” She wasn’t Frosty the Ice Princess. She was Houdini’s granddaughter, capable of slipping out of the most high-intensity situations with a flick of her eyelashes. And he was…he was screwed.

Rafael opted to walk back to the hotel from the warehouse where his team was hand-sorting debris collected from the site that day. It had been a productive evening. A call from Erik Bäcker several hours earlier—the one that interrupted a promising interlude with his lovely partner—confirmed the Semtex used in the Dresden, Mexico City, and Athens bombings had been stolen from a military installation in the Ukraine.

And Ukraine told him Andriy Kobevko, who, rumor had it, had been dead for at least five years. Except now, apparently, he wasn’t. Andriy Kobevko. Alive and well, and back in business. Whoever had hired him must have made a lucrative and extremely attractive offer to bring the man back from the dead.

Bäcker was confident a similar discovery in London would tie all four bombings together. None of the bombings perpetrated by the various groups claiming responsibility, but someone else altogether. It was a start, a
good
start. More, the London team lifted two fingerprints from the detonator they’d found. A match to the partial found that morning by the Athens team.

Even though banks weren’t the Kobevko thing, his signature left no doubt he was the architect of their bombs. Leopards didn’t change their spots, and successful bomb builders didn’t alter their designs. Rafael tasked Poole and Mandek with tracking down the Ukrainian ghost. It had taken them three hours of online digging and calling in of old favors, but they’d discovered Kobevko had changed his name and appearance, now living in Kiev. To the casual observer, he was just a retired businessman, living a quiet life. Quiet until all hell broke loose, thanks to his customers.

Kobevko had no ideology, no loyalty; he worked for whoever was willing to pay him. Five years ago, he’d been at the top of his game. He sold intricate, failsafe bombs to various European tangos, always in Europe. Always one step ahead of the law. Then he’d disappeared. Vanished. There hadn’t been even a whiff he was involved in any illegal activities for years, or even alive, for that matter. Although, unconfirmed, everyone believed him dead.

Tired but pleased with what they’d accomplished, Rafael headed back to the hotel through the dark, deserted streets and lightly swirling snow. Hands stuffed deep in his pockets and shoulders hunched against the cold, he was grateful for the thick coat that kept his core relatively warm. Snugging the wool scarf up around his ears as his hair whipped around his head, he picked up his pace through the quiet streets. The wind showed no mercy and cut through his jeans like a sharp knife.

He liked the silence of the night, liked the desolate streets that in a few hours would come to life with people and vehicles and the commerce of a large city. For now, he owned the empty sidewalks.

Evenly spaced lights cast pale yellow pools on the dirty, slushy piles of snow in the gutters, and all the stoplights cast alien green light on the snow. Most of the shop fronts were dark at three in the morning. Only one car passed him in the last half hour. This wasn’t a night for vagrants and bums.

London slept.

Offered a ride, he’d opted to walk the five miles back to Honey- Back to the hotel. He liked the darkness, and the long walk gave him time to sort through what he knew and what was still a giant question mark.

Honey Winston was one of those question marks. A huge one. He could only imagine what her life had been like. Wealth and privilege, and yet, for all that, she’d been as alone as he had. He saw how analysis and intelligence gathering was her thing, but people? Not so much.

Two babysitters had tried to extort the estate when she’d been young; they’d been apprehended and charged. When she was twenty-two, a lover—one Hank Porter—had demanded she withdraw five million dollars before running away with him. According to her file, Pollack nipped that plan in the bud and made sure the young man spent several years as a guest of Uncle Sam, currently incarcerated in the California State prison in Lancaster for crimes spanning extortion to armed robbery.

Winston had lousy taste in men.

She had trust issues with cause. Clearly, it was hard for her to warm up to people when she didn’t let anyone in in the first place.

And, God help him, Rafael wanted in. This was why he was the asshole walking five miles, at three in the morning, in the snow, after a day that started at dawn. Ensuring he’d arrive at the hotel cold and damned tired, because for the last several hours, he’d only had a portion of his mind on his job. The memory of the slick heat of Winston’s avid mouth, the feel of her soft breasts pressed against him, had distracted him more often than he cared to admit.

He hoped to hell she was in her room, asleep, door locked. Because if she was still up, if she was sitting in the common room waiting for him…

He observed a burned out streetlight ahead, leaving a dense darkness, like a black hole, around its base. His fingers tightened on the grip of the Heckler & Koch pistol in his right pocket as he walked into the inky black. He saw the pool of light cast by the next streetlight, but where he stood was almost pitch-black. Fortunately, he had eyes like a cat, and his night vision was excellent. Still, he increased his speed and stayed alert. Something was off. He’d had an itch on the back of his neck and a bad feeling in his gut since leaving the warehouse. He’d even backtracked several times to see if someone was following him. He hadn’t seen any indication that his paranoia was justified. Maybe he was just thinking too much about Winston.

He considered doubling back again, but he was cold and tired, and ready to hit the sack. It would be more interesting to let them come to him. Let the bastards work for it.

Five feet ahead, to the right, was the darker opening to a narrow alley between two brick buildings. He didn’t hear anything other than the sigh of the wind, didn’t see any movement but fat, softly falling flakes, but he sensed someone hidden in the darkness.

He pitied the poor bastard sleeping in the elements on a night like this.

If it
was
a homeless vagrant.

He stopped, weapon in hand pointed down the mouth of the alley. “Get your ass out here before I start shooting first and asking questions later.”

The wind blew a page of soggy newsprint against his leg, but other than that, everything remained still. Always tuned in to the elements and his surroundings, he strained to hear anything out of place. Sometimes it was more a sense—a feeling—rather than seeing or hearing something that saved his ass. He inhaled deeply, holding the chill air in his lungs before exhaling a foggy breath.