Monster (19 page)

“A rainbow, huh? Wow, I can…”

“You’re stalling.”

“It’s only because it would not be a good time to show you the one I promised. Give me a few minutes to forget the rainbow.”

Reskova laughed, realizing why McDaniels had hesitated. “Show me, Cold, or are you just a tease?”

McDaniels shrugged, reaching down to unfasten his belt, waist button, and zipper. As he stood up, pulling down on the suit-pant waistband and boxer shorts, Reskova recoiled. Hands over mouth, eyes widened, Reskova looked from the area McDaniels had bared to McDaniels’ face comically.

“I told you it would have been better to wait a few minutes.

Reskova blushed but moved closer to McDaniels, tracing the fingers of her left hand lightly over the ugly jagged scar on McDaniels’ right groin area.

“You’re not helping, Boss,” McDaniels informed her. “You didn’t let me touch the rainbow.”

“Mother Mary,” Reskova said in a hushed tone, looking up into McDaniels’ eyes.

“It’s ugly looking but it’s not that bad.”

“I’m not talking about the scar.” Reskova gulped, still touching the scar.

“I know but you’re getting into the realm of sexual harassment, Boss.”

“Good Lord, Mr. Mountain.” Reskova returned her gaze to McDaniels’ eyes. She moved against him and put her arms around his neck. McDaniels kissed her with a tense welling desire. Reskova groaned, swaying tightly against McDaniels. He reached down and pulled her dress up. With one sharp tug he ripped her thong off. Reskova cried out as McDaniels picked her up gently and lowered Reskova’s body against him.

* * *

McDaniels stroked the area displaying Reskova’s rainbow tattoo with his fingertips. He kissed her back and flanks attentively, listening to her moan with each touch. After a few minutes of his ministrations Reskova turned to face McDaniels where he knelt next to her as she lay on the large flowered sofa.

“Jesus, Cold,” Reskova whispered huskily, trailing her fingers over his face, looking downwards. “Not again.”

McDaniels kissed her, pulling Reskova down into his lap. “You’ve ruined our working relationship already so we might as well go for broke.”

Reskova laughed. “You brat. Can’t we just cuddle for a while?”

“Sure, how’s this?” McDaniels shifted Reskova easily so she lay against his chest.

“Hummmmm…” Reskova replied contentedly, running her hand over the scars on McDaniels’ chest. “You must be a real conversation piece at the beach.”

“Yeah, I’m a real hit. Back to the subject: our working relationship.”

“What about it?” Reskova caressed McDaniels’ ribcage. “I’ll still be your boss tomorrow morning. You’ll still be a psycho. What will be different?”

McDaniels began describing in detail their intimate moments from the prior two hours as Reskova tried to seal his mouth with both of her hands.

“Okay… that’s uncalled for.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you. I thought it might be a good idea to find out what you had in mind.”

“I’m not upset. I just thought maybe we could enjoy the moment before we dissected it. Your dog watched the whole thing.” Reskova pointed at Dino, who lay contentedly under the computer desk.

“He’s been asleep for over an hour. Dino was bored to tears.”

“That makes one of us. As to your relationship question, how serious do you want to get?”

“As serious as you allow me to get.” McDaniels ran his hand slowly through her hair.

“I have no objection to getting to know you better. I…I don’t know what happened. When you showed me Hughes’ head, I thought you were a monster. The last few days with you under extremely stressful situations and I lost the monster image I had. I was attracted to you the moment you walked up in the parking lot with Dreyer.”

“Really?”

Reskova looked up at McDaniels. “Yep. How about you? Were you attracted to me?”

“What’s not to be attracted to?” McDaniels answered with a question. “I love red hair and strong women. You handled yourself pretty well during the interrogation Kay and I put you through. I respect the way you do your job. I just don’t want something going on between us to cause a problem with how we handle our work together. It’s too important.”

“Don’t worry about it, Cold. I’ll snap you into shape in the morning. It will be back to business as usual.”

“In that case, I guess I better take care of a little business until then.”

* * *

Reskova woke abruptly, reaching over to touch McDaniels, only to find he had already left the bed. The memory of their night together burned through her consciousness. Her hands trembled. She shivered, remembering his touch. She turned over onto her back, wishing he had stayed in bed with her. After seeing it was nearly five in the morning she put on her robe and walked out to the kitchen. McDaniels had already made coffee. Reskova poured herself a cup and then carried it with her to the room they had set up their listening post in. McDaniels sat at the desk with headphones on typing furiously. Reskova walked into the room. He was dressed in blue-jeans, white strapped tee-shirt, and tennis shoes. McDaniels stopped typing. He took off his headphones and sniffed the air comically. Dino lifted his head to look at Reskova with fleeting interest.

“Oh Boss, you smell good,” McDaniels said, turning to face her.

“I missed you.” Reskova set her coffee down. She brazenly straddled him, putting her arms around McDaniels’ neck, allowing her robe to fall open.

“Jesus, Boss,” McDaniels whispered, stroking her back with a feathery touch. “What happened to snapping me back to business?”

Reskova arched her back in delight at his touch, eyes closed and lips parted. “You’re a self… motivator… Mr. Mountain. I knew you wouldn’t… ah… need me to scream at you this morning.”

An hour later, McDaniels sat on the sofa, coffee cup in hand. Reskova lay contentedly with her head in his lap.

“What were you doing when I took role call this morning?”

“Translating all the tapes recorded last night while we were playing house.” McDaniels set down his coffee cup on the table next to the couch. “I wanted to take my notes to the meeting this morning and compare them to Kay’s.”

“Did I interrupt you too soon?”

“Nope, I only have a little bit left. Will Kay be there this morning or will you have to call Tom back?”

“They’ll all be there to go over details and bring you up to speed on what they’ve been able to uncover. You can fill me in when you get back. I’ll play the lovely housewife today.”

“And be damn convincing too.”

“You were right again.” Reskova pulled her robe tighter.

“About what, Boss?”

“This morning when I woke up, I forgot what we were even here for. You obviously remembered, jumping up before dawn to get right to work. Anyway, I should have…”

“Hey…” McDaniels cut her off, pulling Reskova up next to him. “It took all my will power when I woke up with you against me to get up and do what I was supposed to do.”

“Really?” Reskova leaned into McDaniels.

“Hell yeah. We’ll have to cool it though until we round up these assholes.”

“I don’t know if I can cool it,” Reskova admitted, stoking McDaniels’ chest. “I can’t think of anything but being with you.”

“Boss, if you keep talking like that, you’re going to cause me to run across the street with a few grenades and erase our present mission,” McDaniels replied, only half joking.

“Like I said, you were right.”

“Okay, I was right. Now, what do we do about it?”

“Let me stew about that problem today while you’re gone.” Reskova stood up reluctantly.

“You won’t treat me like a stranger when I get back, will you?”

“Not a chance. I don’t know where we’re going with this relationship but I’m willing to find out.”

McDaniels pushed up from the couch, towering over Reskova. He cupped her face with his huge hands and kissed her on the forehead. “Good, that’s fair enough. I better go get ready.”

“I’ll take a shower with you,” Reskova offered, putting an arm around his waist.

“I don’t think so, Boss.” McDaniels pushed her aside. “I’ll never get ready that way.”

“I guess you’re right again.”

“By the way, thanks for the wake up call this morning.” McDaniels walked toward the bathroom making loud snoring sounds.

“You no good, rotten…” Reskova said under her breath, smiling.

Chapter 14

Playacting

McDaniels walked into the small conference room, having followed Reskova’s detailed directions to the building set up for his business meeting cover. Barrington, Rutledge, and Rasheed all looked up from where they sat with their portable laptops. Rasheed gave his old friend a little wave. Rutledge gestured at the chair opposite her with a welcoming smile.

“Sit down, Colonel. I’ll upload all our data into your laptop,” Rutledge said, as McDaniels put his briefcase on the table and extracted his portable computer.

“Good morning, Colonel,” Barrington said, shaking McDaniels’ hand in greeting as McDaniels sat down next to him. “We have a pool going concerning what time you nailed Diane.”

“A what?” McDaniels radiated confusion with professional skill. He took the serial port cord offered by Rutledge and plugged it into his own computer.

“Oh, he’s good, Tom. That’s an award winning look of consternation. Isn’t it Kay?”

“Do not bring me into this game, Agent Rutledge,” Rasheed said, moving his chair a little further away from Rutledge’s. He looked over at McDaniels, who glanced around with knitted brows. “I am not a part of this, my friend.”

“A part of what?” McDaniels asked, booting up his computer. “I have no idea what you all are talking about.”

“I bet you left her with a big contented smile on her face.”

Rutledge laughed at her partner’s exaggerated imitation of what Barrington thought mimicked Reskova’s look.

“I thought we were here to catch up on putting a bunch of murdering swine where they belong,” McDaniels said, with some irritation in his voice. “Now, what’s this all about?”

“That’s five bucks you owe me.” Rutledge pointed at Barrington with some satisfaction. “I told you he’d do the outraged look next. Perfectly done too, I might add.”

“Damn, Colonel, you’re costing me money. C’mon, give us the time frame and we’ll get right to work. This could mean fifty bucks to me.”

“Okay.” McDaniels folded his hands on the table in front of him as Rutledge uploaded data into his computer. “Let’s start at the beginning. Pretend like I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about and explain it to me.”

“Hey, maybe he didn’t, Jen.” Barrington looked over at his partner uneasily as he sat up with a more solemn expression. “Sorry, Colonel, we were just having a little fun and it appears we may have overstepped ourselves.”

“That is what I told you,” Rasheed inserted.

“Nope,” Rutledge said with surety, looking directly at McDaniels. “He did the deed. I can tell but I think he’s going to play it out. I know you slept with Diane, Cold. Don’t bother denying it.”

“That’s what this is all about?” McDaniels asked incredulously. “You have an office pool as to when I seduced our boss? Man, you two are nuts. I’m glad you weren’t in on this goofy speculation, Kay.”

“I know better than to make such intrusive comments,” Rasheed replied, looking at Barrington and Rutledge reproachfully.

“Why you…” Rutledge gasped as Barrington laughed. “You were the one who suggested it, Kay.”

“Kay?” McDaniels looked at his friend accusingly. “Is that true?”

“Well, I may have inquired as to what you and the Boss were doing while keeping an eye on the Mercado house. These two have corrupted me with their suspicions.”

“I see,” McDaniels acknowledged, shaking his head in disbelief. “Here’s how the day and evening went. The Boss and I watched the Mercado house even though we knew there were two other teams checking on Terrorist movements. We took the dog around the block, doing a walk by to see if Dino picked up any scent from the house. We talked Russian so as to set up our cover. All but one of the people inside bought it. The one who didn’t will probably come over today to test the Boss. Agent Reskova and I worked on her conversational Russian, which improved greatly. I spent much of the day and night listening and translating conversations they had. I’m going to upload my translation file for my once good friend here to compare with his own. Any questions?”

“Sorry,” Barrington repeated his apology.

“I am sorry to have instigated these uncalled for insinuations as to your professional relationship with the Boss, my friend. I am very ashamed.” Rasheed grinned, not looking the least bit ashamed.

“I’m not sorry,” Rutledge countered. “I knew the moment you walked in the room here you cleaned Diane’s clock. I have a sixth sense about matters of the heart. I’ll let you off the hook though for now. Go ahead and upload your file.”

Maintaining his look of annoyance, McDaniels uploaded his translation file. He next looked over Rasheed’s translations and the new information on the suspected terrorists.