Ring of Truth (Devlin Security Force Book 2) (18 page)

As he stepped out of the shower stall to dry, he watched her, studied her with those penetrating eyes.

She angled away to hide. As if it wasn’t already way too late. Oh God, she’d let go with him and flown. Dangerously high. He’d wrung from her every drop of pleasure and emotion the way she was twisting the water from her dripping hair. And God help her, she wanted him again. With the towel he tossed her, she wrapped the long, tangled mess turban-style. She accepted another towel and dried off, still standing in the shower stall. Away from him.

A glance at him tightened her stomach. He seemed to take up the entire bathroom. Naked, all sexy-eyed and gorgeous. What the hell could she do now to resist him? Necessary, until she got her emotions under control. So casual it was. Wrapping the towel around her for some modesty, she stepped onto the soft bath rug and steadied herself before she met his avid gaze.

He closed the gap between them and pressed her power-button tattoo. His eyes held a wicked gleam and his grin dented the dimple in his cheek. The man didn’t play fair.

She batted his hand away. Already his touch was arousing a shivery sensation. “Down, boy. Hey, it must be getting late. We ought to get dressed and go find some dinner.”

He cupped her chin, his eyes probing her face, consternation crimping his brow. “Don’t act like nothing special happened between us, Mara. We nearly flew over the Golden Gate Bridge.”

“No, we did. I mean... I just—”

She didn’t know what he saw on her face but suddenly he wrapped his arms around her. “You’re afraid. And this time it’s not our bad guys. What are you afraid of?”

“Nothing. You’re reading too much into the situation.”

“You were struggling with something a minute ago. You afraid of me?”

Yes. And of myself and how much I dare give, how much I care.
She wriggled away. “Get out. Aren’t you the one who said this was casual? Then chill.”

“Chill? With you, sweetheart, cooling off isn’t possible. It’s still early. Dinner can wait. You’ve whetted my appetite but not for food.”

Before she could object, he scooped her up—again—and marched off to the master bedroom. “Hey, what are you doing? Put me down,” she sputtered. But an old sci-fi line came back to her:
Resistance is futile
. Especially when down deep she wanted the inevitable.

He dumped her in the middle of the king bed and followed her down, kneeling over her. One side at a time, as if opening the petals of a flower, he peeled back her towel. “I rushed you in the shower. This time’s for you.”

***

Later they ate dinner at a sidewalk bistro down the block. With color in her cheeks and her lips plumped from his kisses, she looked sexy and well loved. And elegant as always, dressed in black pants and a black silk shirt under the new grass-green jacket she’d bought that afternoon to replace her ruined one. He couldn’t wait to get all that off her again.

He ordered steak and she pasta.

“Need to replenish all that testosterone with some red meat, big guy?” she teased.

“Read into it whatever you want, sweetheart. I notice you ordered carbs.”

She laughed and lifted her wine glass to him. “Touché. Enjoy your steak.”

He told her about Kaplan’s call. When she heard the agent offered as much support as the trap door beneath a hanged man, she dropped her forkful of seafood linguini. “Suspects?
Us?
He’s an idiot!” If Kaplan were there, her irate look would’ve reduced him to cinders.

“Ex-con here, remember?” Cort said.

Her eyes widened in comprehension. So did his.

Did she forget he’d spent four years in prison? Did she forget he’d committed that robbery along with Leon? The honest bewilderment and affront on her face said she did. He’d never known anybody to think of him without his damn sins on their mind. Then there was that odd thing she’d said about not trusting himself. Made sense in a weird sort of way. Not that he’d let himself get all mushy. Best not to read too much into anything.

She twitched her shoulders in dismissal of his reminder. “You were in for burglary, not cold-blooded murder. Besides, we called 911 to report the attack.”

“Happens all the time. I heard cons talk all the time about reporting their own crime to draw suspicion away from themselves that way. Didn’t work. They were in prison.”

Her look of rebuke and disgust before she returned to her pasta was for the cops or maybe the dumb crooks, not him. He hoped.

When they arrived back at the condo, he expected to pick up where they’d left off. She burned hot and bright in his arms, and he wanted her again. She popped into his mind when he least expected. When he was trying to figure out the puzzle of the ring pieces and their murderous competitors, she wrapped herself around his thoughts and he wanted to know what she thought, felt, wanted. He wanted to bounce ideas off her. And hell, yes, he wanted her in his bed.

But his craving for her was because of the danger. Nothing more. He’d had great sex before. He couldn’t remember when exactly but he must’ve. He could keep their relationship just friends, just business except for the sex. He was fine alone. No problem.

As they reached the top of the stairs, he started to follow her to the master suite.

She turned, placing a hand on his arm. “Casual, remember, Jones?”

“Affair, remember, Marton? That means sex, or it meant sex in our recent past.”

“Sex doesn’t have to mean always sleeping together.” When he gaped at her, she rose on tiptoes to brush a light kiss across his mouth. “Not tonight. Please. First flying on the red-eye, then... well, I need a good night’s sleep before facing Mom tomorrow.”

Cort opened his eyes and stretched, thinking of the woman who’d kept him awake hoping she’d come to his bed. Or invite him into hers.

To his amazement, Mara’d been the one to quote his demand for casual, no-involvement sex. So why the hell did that bug him? He’d gotten what he wanted. More than once. His body was singing hallelujah. But casual? Not hardly. So he spent the rest of the night in this bed alone, wanting her and wondering why she’d fought her orgasm in the shower. Afterward she hadn’t held back. He ought to decide if he really wanted to know what the hell was going on.

He swung out of bed, lowering his feet to the plush dark red carpet. He pulled on jeans and a Henley and hit the bathroom. No sounds throughout the condo, only the distant intrusion of a jet overhead and a car horn below. If Mara was still sleeping, he should wake her. Time to plan strategy.

He padded barefoot down the hall. Rounding the corner to the master suite’s door, he skidded to a halt. The door stood ajar. Was it open before? The suite contained its own bath so no need to use the hall one.

“Mara?”

No answer.

He pushed the door inward and entered the room. Bedcovers tossed back on the king-size bed, suitcase open on a luggage rack, bathroom door wide, toiletries lined up on the vanity. He called her name again.

Silence.

No reason to panic. Yeah, she’d backed off after dinner but she hadn’t split. Not without her clothing. Without the code, nobody could’ve gotten in here and carted her off. So where the hell did the woman go? She knew running around out there was dangerous. His gut started a slow freeze.

He dashed to the other bedroom and jammed on his boots before stomping down the stairs. Where he was going to look for her, he wasn’t sure, but he couldn’t just pace the floor. He opened the door to see—her.

“Thanks,” Mara said brightly, a big smile on her face. “I was having trouble managing everything.”

He shoved the door, barely caught it before it slammed. Was about to ream her out for scaring the bejesus out of him when he spied what she was carrying—a fiberboard coffee holder containing two humongous Starbucks cups and a paper bag marked José’s Bagels. He closed his mouth with an audible click of teeth.

“The kitchen has no food, nothing except state-of-the-art equipment. DSF’s people must order supplies delivered when they plan to be here.” She handed him the coffee and bagels before depositing her bag and jacket on a nearby chair.

He gripped the breakfast. Otherwise he’d drag her into his arms to reassure himself she was okay. Judging from the speed at which she’d run away from him after dinner last night, she wouldn’t welcome an embrace. If ever again. Smarter for both of them.

“Going out alone here is dangerous,” he instructed. “Those two scumbags know we saw them yesterday. They might think we can identify them. And what if the colonel’s men found a way to follow us?”

When she angled her head at his harsh tone, he tried to relax his features. But she merely smiled indulgently, no more frightened by the Murder One scowl than if he’d launched into a lullaby. Although his singing might make her run screaming.

“You were worried about me. I’m sorry,” she said gently, as if to a child. “I didn’t want to wake you until I could offer coffee. Everything bagels and cream cheese. Toasted. Still warm.” Her beaming smile disarmed his ire. She looked good enough to eat, in slim jeans and a scoop-necked red top and with her ebony hair draped forward over her shoulders.

Immediately he felt the tension drain from his gut. “Don’t go off alone again, okay?”

“Only to see my mom.” She pried the food containers from his death grip and whipped to the kitchen. “Although I can’t imagine how any of those guys would be able to find us at this address. And I went out the rear of the building.”

His gut knotted again. Then her thoughtful gesture hit him and he followed her to the kitchen. “Hey, thanks for the breakfast. I need the coffee.”

Mara sighed her relief as she set down the containers on the dining table. “Colombian, black, the way you like it.” She gathered napkins—no paper ones in this kitchen, only dark-blue cloth—knives, and two square blue plates and arranged them on the table.

She’d managed to keep her cool in spite of wanting to throw herself at him as soon as he opened the door. She flipped the lids off both venti paper cups and inhaled the chocolate steam of her non-fat, no-whip, no-foam mocha before she drank a bracing swallow. Totally sweet he’d been worried about her. She grinned.

His lovemaking had banished the horrors of yesterday and replaced fear with pleasure. He was tender and sexy, forceful and demanding, and she yielded to what her body and soul wanted. Needed. She could fight this tangling of her mind and heart. Sure.

“Mara, you can’t play ignorant,” he said. “At least some of the bad guys have known our every move so far. Why not now?”

“That same question haunts me. That and the sight of Danita Inglish bleeding on her kitchen floor.” She slid his coffee toward him.

He lifted the cup and took a healthy drink. “Idiotic pretentious name. Why venti and not extra large?”

“
Venti
is Italian for
twenty
, as in twenty ounces.”

“Pretentious.” He glared at the cup. “Like I said.”

No argument from her on that. She returned to his other question. “Only that detective knows where we are.”

“And Thomas Devlin.” Shaking his head, he slathered cream cheese on his bagel.

They needed a distraction. He’d never been to San Francisco before so... “We shouldn’t bother Danita’s daughter until tomorrow. We have the day until I meet Mom for dinner. How’d you like to see the city?”

***

Seeing the city suited Cort just fine. Spending the day with this beautiful woman walking by his side and putting their quest on hold was strategy of a sort. Mara had phoned to arrange a meeting tomorrow with Inglish’s daughter. To their surprise, Ellen Plante didn’t slam down the phone. She sounded eager to talk to them.

The day was theirs. If Mara wanted to pretend nothing odd happened between them last night, he’d go with it. For now. But he had questions.

She set a mean pace in green sneakers that amazingly matched her jacket. She carried another of those big-ass bags she favored, this one somehow strapped onto her back as a backpack. About nine o’clock, they’d set out on foot toward public transit. As the morning wore on, the heavy blanket of fog retreated to the bay but a cloud cover kept the day cool.

“We’ll hit the highlights if it’s okay with you,” she said. “I haven’t done this since Mom moved here six years ago.”

“Sounds good.”

The glass window of a Chinese noodle restaurant reflected nobody paying them undue attention. No sign of the Clone Brothers. Or anybody with a military demeanor. As they passed the Starbucks where Mara bought their coffees, he checked a man watching the crowd from beneath the small awning. Nondescript, well dressed, not somebody he’d seen before, but Centaur could afford to pay local thugs. When a blonde woman ran up to the man, the two embraced and set off together across the street.

“We clear? No bad guys?” Mara said.

Reading his mind again or had he sighed in relief? He didn’t know. Her intuition ought to bother him but for some reason he liked it. “So far.”

She laughed.

“I keep thinking about the bad guys, who they are, how many, what they know.”

“What do
we
know so far?”

“Spoken like a true research geek,” he said, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. He liked the way her mind worked. “We know this shadowy Centaur syndicate wants the jewels. Centaur could have sent dozens of agents for all we know. The Gramornia royal family sent an agent into the country to retrieve them. And the rival prime minister sent security police to stop me from retrieving them.”

“We don’t know which group killed Danita Inglish or if it’s the same people who killed Dante Falco.” When he started to comment on her change of heart, she continued, “Yes, I do think he was murdered. Definitely. After yesterday, how could I not?” Her shoulders moved in a shudder of revulsion.

“I’m betting the violence is on Centaur. Devlin said the group is ruthless,” Cort said. “Although Colonel Yerik would have no qualms about murder, he has more reason to leave our suspects alone than he does to attack them. The royals might have their spy investigate, even tail us, but murder? I doubt it. But it’s all speculation.”

“So it boils down to we don’t know much at all. Two possible accomplices are dead. We haven’t found any ring pieces. Or any proof of my dad’s innocence.”

He shook his head. No, they had zip. And so did the FBI. But the domino he’d set in action should take down one set of bad guys before too long. If all went according to plan. If not, the downside yanked on that frozen knot in his gut.

They turned left on the wide boulevard of Market Street and continued to the cable-car turntable at the foot of Powell, where one of the tram-like cars was just making its rotation. The brown uniformed gripman maneuvered a tall handle to walk the wooden turntable around, turning the cable car with it. A crowd of tourists snapped pictures of the operation.

“We taking that?” He nodded toward the red-and-wood-toned vehicle with San Francisco Municipal Railway on the side.

At the small-boy excitement he couldn’t keep from his tone, she gave him a knowing smile. “A great way to see the city, nice and slow, up and down the hills. We can get off at the edge of Chinatown, board again later, and ride it the rest of the way.”

They paid the three-dollar each fare and climbed aboard. They grabbed places at the end of a wooden bench facing outward. When a family of four wedged onto the seat, Cort scooted close to Mara and curved his arm around her shoulders.

No rumble of an internal-combustion engine, only clatter and click as the cable car rolled along its metal rails. The climb up the steep incline of Powell Street offered a spectacular view of the city.

“An Englishman who made wire cable for mines came up with the idea for the cable cars,” she said. “When a horse-drawn streetcar slipped on a wet hillside, he saw the horses killed and wanted to prevent more accidents. The first cable-car line went into service in 1873. At one time there were cable car lines all over the city but the 1906 earthquake destroyed many. Now the city has only two lines. There’s a museum farther along the route if you want to see how they work.”

“You know I would.” Her eagerness to show him exactly what he’d enjoy warmed him more than the rays of sunlight peeking through the cloud cover.

Casual? Hardly. Shit.

***

Rousso buried his nose in his guide book and pulled the baseball cap he had just purchased lower over his face. Pretending to plan his afternoon, he backed deeper into the shade of a restaurant awning from where he could see his targets watching the lazy antics of sea lions.

He could not find their hotel but tracking credit-card purchases led him to the street. Luckily he spotted them this morning. Crowds made it easy to follow at a distance. He did not find Inglish’s ring piece in her tawdry apartment, which meant Jones and Marton did not have it either. So what were they doing? Was this sightseeing day a ploy to fool him into thinking they had given up?

His cell phone buzzed. When he saw the caller’s number, his blood chilled. His boss, the head of Centaur. The man known only as Z had created the sprawling network in only a few short years, with contacts in many countries. Some said his family used to have money but lost everything in a scandal. Others said he was ex U.S. military. Whatever the truth, Rousso feared the man more than he admired him.

Before the phone could ring again, he punched the button. “Rousso here.”

“You’ve called attention to yourself,” the Centaur boss said without preamble. The gruff quality of his voice put Rousso in mind of a knife being sharpened. “I don’t like publicity of any sort but witnesses? News broadcasts?”

“I can explain, Mr. Z. No one—”

“Fuck the explanation! Your attack on the ambulance was on television. CNN, Fox, all the networks. No more publicity. Do you fucking understand?”

His Adam’s apple bobbed painfully as he swallowed the bile creeping up his throat. He nodded automatically. “Yes, sir. No more fallout. I promise you.”

“Where are Jones and the woman now?”

He glanced from his shade to where they had their heads together. “They are standing on the dock at Fisherman’s Wharf.”

“Fisherman’s Wharf? Details.”

“I followed them to Chinatown, where Jones bought trinkets, souvenirs, and she bought a bag. My taxi followed their cable car back down the hill to here, where they strolled the shops of Pier 39 and ate Dungeness crab at one of the seaside restaurants. Now they watch sea lions. Sir.” He braced himself for Z’s reaction.

“
Sightseeing?
” Z’s voice boomed, the commanding voice according to rumor he’d perfected during his military career. “What about Inglish’s ring piece?”

“They do not seem to be searching. But I do not believe they possess it already,” he hastened to add.