Femme Fatale (14 page)

But it was also possible she was playing possum, waiting for him to go away.
Someone
had left the wet trail through the upstairs room.

“Hey,” he said in a louder voice.

When he’d set up security on Krystof Scherba, Mick had known the people gunning for him would be coming after the man himself or the work that he did. Scherba had secrets, and secrets were worth money. The computer cracker never went anywhere without his notebook com
puter. Mick had persuaded Scherba to allow the secondary alarms to be put on the computer as well as on the desk.

The desk alarm had lit up, indicating that the computer had been tampered with.

Using his peripheral vision to keep an eye on the woman lying in the bed, Mick glanced at the computer. Green lights danced and flickered across the front of the machine, indicating that it was in use.

No way would Scherba leave that little beastie running unattended.

Then the wet pattern in the computer chair caught Mick’s eye. The rounded pattern was wide hipped, definitely feminine, and he would have bet the contours fit the vixen lying abed.

“Nice try, darlin’,” Mick said. “But the computer’s running, and I know my principal wouldn’t allow that to happen. So why don’t you come up out of that bed and we’ll have us a chat.”

“Krystof?” The voice sounded plaintive and whiny.

But the voice also sounded sexy as hell. The accent seemed to be American, but that could have been put on. There was nothing more attention getting than the soft, sexy voice of a woman just roused from sleep.

Only he was certain that this particular woman hadn’t been sleeping, and that she was gutsy enough to try to pull off the act proved she was dangerous. And if that wasn’t enough, there was still that little swan dive from the bridge while struggling with assailants to keep in mind.

“Not Krystof, love,” Mick grated. Irritation stung him. Even though he’d captured the woman, he was certain there would be hell to pay because she had managed to get aboard the catamaran.

Scherba was a man who expected perfection. He found
it in the computer work he did, and he demanded the same capability from the people who worked around him.

Languidly, making no sudden movements, the woman sat up in bed. The blue silk sheet slithered down her athletic body, revealing rounded shoulders sculpted by serious dedication in the gym. She was tall, Mick realized as he tried to gather all the details and remember if he’d seen her near or around Scherba in the past few days.

Shadows gathered in the hollow of her throat as she regarded him with a sleepy gaze. The sheets continued skidding down her body, holding just for an instant at her breasts, then cascading over those as well.

Inadvertently Mick’s gaze went to those breasts and the back of his throat dried immediately in response. She was definitely full figured in addition to being athletic. Her breasts were firm and proud, defying gravity. The pale pink nipples stood out darker than her white skin. No immediate attempt was made to hide the lush femininity.

She lifted her knees and wrapped her arms around her legs, trapping the treacherous silk sheet and hiding the voluptuous body in an economy of motion.

Mick had to resist an immediate impulse to rip the sheet away and reveal the rest of her. Catching her like this, with her pants down so to speak, made her his conquest. And a beauty like this one brought out all the primitive instincts that lingered in the back of a healthy, red-blooded man’s brain.

No,
Mick corrected.
Not a man’s brain. Someone like this, she took a man’s brain right out of the bloody equation.
His breath tightened in his chest and he felt his pulse pound at his temples.

Swallowing hard, Mick pushed his primitive response away. Still he stared at the outlines of her breasts where they curved out from the shielding protection of her
crossed arms atop her sheet-covered knees.
Let her feel naked,
he thought.
It’ll make her less likely to feel confident about this whole situation. I’ll get the answers I need.

Her lambent green eyes—despite the darkness Mick was certain they were the green of the Pacific—held amused lights in them as she regarded him. Damp and matted to her head, her hair could have been any color, but he was certain it wasn’t dark or red. She was a woman who could steal a man’s breath away.

Or a computer cracker’s secrets,
he reminded himself.

“Are you going to shoot me?” Her tone was too light, too in control for someone facing another person down the length of a pistol pointed in the wrong direction for personal comfort.

“I might,” Mick growled. “And if it wasn’t me, there are men aboard this boat who would shoot you.” Even as he said that, recognized it as truth, he felt badly for her. Scherba’s regular security people would probably have come in blasting.

And in that moment, Mick Stone realized he might be the woman’s only chance of getting off the boat alive.

The young woman’s eyes widened somewhat, but Mick got the definite feeling that it was all put on. She wasn’t scared. Even staring down the barrel of his pistol, she wasn’t scared.
Stupid sheila,
he thought.
You should be afraid right now.

“Whatever would they want to shoot me for?” the woman demanded.

“For being here.”

“I’m a guest.”

“Like bloody hell you are,” Mick growled. He hated the fact that the young woman looked so vulnerable in the bed. His gaze kept flitting to her breasts, and he couldn’t resist wishing he could see the whole package.

“Krystof isn’t going to like how you’re talking to me,” she insisted.

Mick shook his head. He had to hand it to her, she didn’t cave easily even when a situation was going against her. “Smooth as you think you are, darlin’, there are a few things you messed up on.”

“Ah,” she said, arching an eyebrow. “A critique then.”

Despite the tension of the situation and the fact that Scherba would take him to task later, Mick liked the woman. He liked her bravado in the face of certain disaster and he liked the skill she’d obviously had to get aboard the boat. None of the women his sisters had foisted on him over the years had that quality.

Here he was, facing a woman who had actually piqued his interest, and she had to be a damn thief.

“You got wet swimming through the river,” Mick said.

The woman wrapped her arms around her shoulders. Her breasts jiggled suggestively and Mick couldn’t help wondering how they tasted and how they felt. Heavy, he guessed, heavy and solid and definitely feminine.

“Very cold,” the woman said.

“You left a trail across the main foyer.”

She shrugged, and her breasts pressed together and deepened the cleavage. “Couldn’t be helped.”

“You left a wet spot in the chair.”

The woman’s eyes drifted to the chair. “Now that,” she said, “that I did not think about.” She looked back at him. “But I’ll remember in the future.”

“And your hair is wet, Goldilocks,” Mick said. “Meaning you’re my girl no matter what little story you decide to trot out.”

“Looks like you have it all figured out, Father Bear.” She trailed her fingers through her damp hair, revealing
one bounteous globe that hung tantalizingly before him. “I have to admit, you didn’t catch me at my best.”

Mick appreciated the insouciance in her tone and couldn’t help paying attention to the way the muscles of her shoulders moved as she touched her hair. And he couldn’t help wondering how that tanned skin would look under the warm kiss of fragile moonlight.

Or how her lips would taste and feel.

Roughly Mick shoved the thoughts from his mind. Above all things, he was a consummate professional. Except that the reaction his body was presently showing didn’t advertise that.

“But the thing of it is, darlin’,” he growled, “I did catch you.” And the hell of it was that he didn’t know how he was supposed to keep her whole—or maybe even alive—when Scherba discovered she’d broken in.

She smiled sweetly at him. “The trick is, Mr. Mystery, keeping me caught. You see, I specialize in get-aways.” She tilted her chin up, her tone definitely flirting, and blew him a kiss.

Then she closed her eyes.

Mick didn’t realize that he had seen her close her eyes until after the explosion of light and sound filled the berth. He was stunned, deafened and blinded by the thunder and blistering light. For a moment he thought she had been a suicide bomber, there to take Scherba down at any cost, killing them both in the blast designed to rip the bottom out of
Guilty Pleasures
and send the boat to the river bottom.

Then he realized he was still standing.

Just a flash-bang,
mate, he told himself. He was familiar with the disorienting effects of the pyrotechnic gre
nades from his stint in the military and considerable exposure to them since.

He also realized that the woman would try to make her escape as well. He still had a chance to stop her. But he was blind as a bat.

A
s soon as the flash of light faded from her eyelids, Kylee snapped her eyes open. Even though she’d had her eyes closed, there was some residual loss of vision. Black spots whirled in front of her. Excitement flared through her, accompanied by unwanted stirrings she had seldom felt. Mr. Mystery had been much more handsome than she’d been able to ascertain through the long-distance lenses.

She blinked her eyes, wishing she could see, wishing there was a better time to just look at the man. But she knew her vision wouldn’t recover completely in time. She took some solace in the fact that the battery-powered minicam she wore on her wet suit shot footage of everything in front of her. The fish-eye lens would make certain she got it all.

As bad as her present condition was, though, she knew she was light-years ahead of Mr. Mystery. He opened and closed his eyes rapidly, striving desperately for some re
turn to normal vision. That would be minutes in coming, though. The F/X box she’d planted on the wall behind her when Barbara Price had warned her that the man was coming had strobed directly into his eyes.

Still, the light in the room was enough to reveal the hard, handsome planes of his face. He had high cheekbones and a square jaw, the features of a man who had shaped his life through determination and grit. And the ringlets of hair drew her attention. She couldn’t help wondering what it would feel like to trail her fingers through those ringlets.

Get away! Get away!
The impulse roared within her.

Trouble had always been easy for her to get into. Escaping trouble was the trickier part.

Getting aboard
Guilty Pleasures
had been easy. Under the cover of the river, Kylee had slipped a small miniscuba from her coat and swum to the boat. Everyone aboard had been pulled forward by her dive into the river, drawn by the plight of the drowning woman. Besides the miniscuba, she’d also carried several of the F/X boxes set up to respond to the miniature remote control device she carried.

Once aboard the boat, Kylee had fitted the earpiece to her ear and throat again, then let Barbara Price guide her to Scherba’s stateroom with the thermographic capabilities of the spy-satellite Stony Man was using for the mission. A digital electronic lock pick had gotten her past the locks on Scherba’s door.

Inside the room, Kylee had used the encrypted disk Bethany Riggs had turned up in Cape Town, South Africa, to bring up the hidden operating system lurking inside Scherba’s notebook computer. A spare satellite phone plugged into the notebook’s modular connection had pro
vided the link Barbara and her team needed to access the computer’s hard drive.

Everything had been going great till Barbara had reported that Mick Stone had decided to come belowdecks. A quick check then revealed the secondary alarm booted directly to the computer that Kylee had missed earlier. By then, it had been too late to run.

She’d pulled her wet suit down to her waist on the theory that the sight of a naked woman temporarily rendered most men unable to think for several seconds at a time, then crawled into Scherba’s bed. The ruse had been an excellent on-the-fly idea. Too bad it hadn’t worked. If she hadn’t had the F/X box rigged and ready to go, getting out of the room could have proved much harder.

And you’re not out of here yet,
she chided herself.

With easy athletic grace, Kylee rolled from the bed, fully expecting Mr. Mystery to start blasting with the big silenced pistol in his fist. The fact that he didn’t surprised her.

However, he did shift, clearly moving by memory, and came to a stop in front of the doorway. That was something she had not planned on. His economy of movement, the sheer grace of his course of action, was expected after seeing him so many times in motion aboard
Guilty Pleasures.
But she hadn’t expected him to think so quickly to block the doorway.

Now that she was this close to him, had felt the heat of his cerulean-blue gaze, she couldn’t help wondering how good he was physically. She was a trained martial artist, but he looked like a bruiser who survived on sheer strength and ferocity. Unfortunately, he also looked like a man who could clear out a bar of Hell’s Angels by himself.

He stood in the doorway, raising his open left hand to
block her. He blinked his eyes rapidly, continuing to try to bring his vision back to normal.

That’s not a place you want to be, Mr. Mystery,
Kylee thought. She rose to her feet in front of the computer table, glanced to check that the satellite uplink was still functioning, and estimated the distance separating her from the man. Now she pulled the wet suit back over her shoulders and zipped up.

Taking one long step, Kylee launched herself into the air in a flying kick. Some preternatural instinct must have warned the man, some ghost of a sixth sense that had survived the prehistoric times. He was in motion before she could stop her attack, dropping into a defensive crouch.

Instead of striking his chest as she’d intended, the heel of her left foot collided with his face. She hated that, hated thinking of the swelling and the bruises that would surely mar those handsome features for the next few days. The impact drove him backward, but he turned to allow some of the kick to glide past him. Kylee slid with it, ending up in a spilled tangle of arms and legs and heaving bodies.

He cursed at her. “Stupid, sheila. Even if you get past me, how do you expect to get by all of those guards top-side?”

Kylee didn’t waste her breath. She slammed an elbow under his chin, snapping that handsome jaw shut and hoping she wouldn’t break any of his teeth.

He slapped at her with his free hand when she grabbed his other wrist and tried to break his pistol free. Putting pressure on the man’s arm was like trying to squeeze an iron bar.

For a moment during the skirmish, she was on top of him, her legs straddling him as she fought to control his gun arm. Her pulse thundered at her temples, and she
knew the increased pace and pressure weren’t only from the exertion and the excitement that flared through her. She felt the hard length of his body pressed against hers from underneath, felt the heat of him as he struggled against her. Her breasts molded to his chest as he circled his free arm around her upper body and tried to lock a hold on her. She drew back a fist and punched him in the nose hard enough to snap his head back. She’d never hesitated to hit her brothers during a stunt session that called for it.

Mr. Mystery snarled curses at her in the same thick Australian accent he’d used only a moment ago. He maintained his grip even as she shifted, grinding her hips into him to get the leverage she needed, and drew back her fist again. This time, though, he dodged and she slammed her knuckles into the floor. The carpet wasn’t enough to cushion the blow. Bright, broken pain shivered up through her wrist and she hoped she hadn’t sprained it.

“Give it up, sheila,” the man yelled. “They’ll kill you.”

“And you won’t?”

“No.”

“Sorry. I don’t believe you.” Kylee slammed her forearm into that stubborn jaw again.

In the end, though, the same wet suit that had given her away in the chair also proved too slick for the man to maintain his grip on. She slipped away even as he tried to squeeze her and restrain her. Kicking her feet against him, she slid across the threshold on her back.

On the other side of the doorway, Kylee tried to get to her feet. Her ribs felt bruised, but she couldn’t help smiling.
I’m better than you, Mr. Mystery. I came onto your home turf and captured your flag.

Pushing himself over onto his stomach, his blind eyes
still searching the immediate area around him, the man lifted the .45 in his right fist.

“Hold up, sheila!” he roared. But his aim was off by a few inches, letting her know that he still couldn’t see properly.

Rolling onto her side away from the man, Kylee swung her right arm back, catching the man’s gun wrist and knocking the weapon loose. The big .45 struck the wooden flooring, dug a scratch in the finish and slid away.

The man caught Kylee’s right ankle in a grip that felt like iron. Instinctively she rolled so that her ankle turned in toward the man’s thumb. Years of martial arts training had taught her that turning a trapped limb toward the opponent’s thumb was the easiest way to break that opponent’s grip no matter how strong he—or she—was.

Her ankle turned now, but she was certain she’d lost some skin and would wear a ring of bruises around the ankle for a few days. She stamped with the other foot, catching the man’s elbow and breaking his hold.

Kylee rolled away. The catamaran crew would be alert now. Her escape window was closing by the second. She pushed herself to her feet, surprised that the man was getting to his feet at the same time. He threw himself forward, seeming to fill the middle of the room as he got to his feet between her and the spiral stairs that led to the catamaran’s main deck.

The man drew up in an openhanded martial arts stance. He also turned his head to the side, using his peripheral vision instead of trying to look at her directly. The temporary stun effects of the F/X box would take out direct vision, but peripheral vision wasn’t affected quite as much and recovered more quickly.

Kylee closed on him, trying to muscle her way past him.

His hands flicked out in a series of slaps and punches. If any of them had landed, Kylee was certain she’d have been knocked down. She ducked and bobbed, blocking with her open hands, using her hands and her forearms to turn the blows aside.

You’re good, Mr. Mystery,
Kylee silently conceded.
You’re quick and you’re dangerous.

She ducked beneath a strike that would have flattened her nose if it had connected and fired a punch into his midsection. Her fist connected with the Kevlar vest he wore, but she could also feel the hard muscle that lay beneath. The punch didn’t even faze him.

If it hadn’t been for years of martial arts training and stuntwork, seemingly unending days of being a mock punching bag for her brothers, Kylee knew she wouldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds against her opponent. Even then, she suspected that the man was holding a little back, maybe to protect himself or maybe because she was female.

And with each passing second, the man’s vision grew better.

In an all-or-nothing move, Kylee dropped quickly into a crouch and threw a leg out to sweep the man’s feet from under him. She pushed herself up again as he fell. By the time she reached the spiral staircase leading up to the catamaran’s main cabin, she’d taken out the earplug that had protected her against the loud noise of the F/X box and put the earpiece into place.

“Are you there?” Kylee asked in a breathless rush. She grabbed a coat from the rack near the door as she entered the stairwell, shrugging it on to cover her wet suit. She ascended the stairs in a rapid, driving rhythm.

The man cursed behind her as he got to his feet. He
ran forward and slammed into the spiral staircase by mistake. The structure shook.

“I’m here,” Barbara answered. “You’re in a bad spot.”

“And assessments off the cuff like that are what a mission controller does?” Kylee quipped. “I think I had that one.”

“The good news is your button-cam got a picture of Mr. Mystery. We may be able to identify him.”

Kylee stopped at the entrance to the main cabin. The room was filled with buffet tables and elegant lounge furniture. “What about the room?”

“Four guys. All armed.”

“Security?”

“Two confirmed hits on the database we built on the op,” Barbara agreed.

“It’s a safe bet on the other two, then,” Kylee said. The stairwell vibrated beneath her, letting her know Mr. Mystery was up and about and in hot pursuit.

“I’d say so.”

“The computer connection?”

“We’re working it.”

Desperate, Kylee peered out. Four men stood in the room with pistols in their fists.

“Over there!” one of the men yelled. “In the stairwell!”

Kylee ducked and at least two bullets ripped through the stairwell above her head. “Don’t shoot!” she yelled. “Please don’t shoot!”

Thankfully, the vibrations coming up from belowdecks halted as well. Maybe Mr. Mystery thought she was going to be coming back down.

Despite the seriousness of the situation, Kylee couldn’t help feeling jazzed and amped up. She
was
a throwback
to the Highland rogues, as her mother had feared. Situations like this always brought out her worst. At least, that was how her mom would have looked at it.

God forbid that she ever find out,
Kylee thought.

One of the men spoke in a guttural language that Kylee thought she recognized as Czech. However, with an earplug in one ear, and with gunshots still ringing in the other, she wasn’t sure. She hoped the translation was roughly,
Hey, that was a woman. Don’t shoot.

Taking a deep breath, she stepped out into the cabin with her arms away from her body. She still had the remote control in her left hand and kept the device concealed. Looking down the barrels of four pistols, she discovered it wasn’t hard to look scared. She held her hands up immediately.

“Who are you?” one of the men demanded in accented English.

“Down there!” Kylee gulped and glanced nervously at the stairwell. “A man with a gun! He’s killed them! He’s killed them all!” She decided then and there that if Barbara Price ever offered to let her see any video or hear any audio recording of tonight that she would flatly refuse. Playing the ingenue was
so
not her best suit.

“Killed who?” the man demanded.

“Them!” Kylee screamed in terror.
Come on, guy.
Them
are always getting killed.

She glanced over her shoulder at the stairwell. So far, Mr. Mystery hadn’t put in an appearance. She hoped he wouldn’t get hurt. Besides being quick and dangerous, Mr. Mystery was also quite dashing. In a rough-hewn kind of way.

The men seemed undecided. All of them kept their pistols pointed at her. Maybe they hadn’t immediately moved her into the
potentially datable, don’t shoot her in the
head
category that most men seemed to lump attractive women who appeared suddenly before them.