Authors: Kay Hooper
Her hair was that rare, striking color between red and gold, and it hung thick and shining to the middle of her back. Styled simply
with a center part, that silky sweep of burnished hair framed a face that was too delicately perfect to be real. She was like a painting; every feature was finely drawn with artistic excellence. And in that strikingly perfect face, her eyes were simply incredible. Huge and shadowed by long, thick lashes, they were a clear, pale green.
In that single, flashing instant, Rafferty wanted Sarah Cavell more than he’d ever wanted anything or anyone in his life. All the training and experience gained in his thirty-four years of living hadn’t prepared him for this. His responses were no longer controlled by his mind. Instead, two million years of instincts were in command. His mind grappled with the situation, trying to master instinct, fighting impulses just this side of savage. And the fact that he partially succeeded was due almost entirely to the strength of his own force of will. A complicated situation, he thought grimly, had just become nothing less than impossible. How could he do what he was supposed to?
He waved her to a chair and sat down across from her, hoping his reaction hadn’t shown on his face. It was said he had a poker face when he desired one; with any luck at all, that was true. And he was, after all, a lawyer, so he got his tongue in gear. “First names, I think?”
She nodded agreeably. “Unless we want to have people staring at us. That kind of thing perished with formal Victorians.” Her soft voice was dry.
“True. So, Sarah, why is a nice girl like you about to spend a few weeks with a total stranger?” he asked. Her reaction to his question pierced the fog of his mind. He thought he saw something in her eyes before she answered, something that looked like fear.
“It’s my job.” She shrugged a little, her green eyes unreadable once more.
Rafferty had learned early in his career that he possessed an innate ability—call it an instinct—to detect anomalies. If something was out of sync in a situation he simply felt it, like
an itch at the back of his mind. And that itching was fierce now.
He brushed a thumb along his jaw slowly, watching her, unaware that he was wearing his best professional poker face to hide the turmoil she caused. “Hagen said you’d fill me in,” he said abruptly, “on what we’re supposed to be doing.”
She met his steady gaze, her own unflinching. “Our assignment,” she said, “is to make contact with an undercover agent who has coded information. I was pulled—brought in for this—because I’m a cryptographer. Hagen said that twice in the past they’ve—we’ve—bought a pig in a poke and found it worthless, so my part in this assignment is to verify the information.” Inwardly, Sarah swore at herself, wishing desperately that the handsome face across from her would reveal something of the man behind it, reveal something of his thoughts.
Rafferty noted the lapses and hesitations in her statements, and on top of everything else, he had to wonder. “I see. So we’re to sail the
Caribbean on this yacht Hagen provided until we make contact with the agent?”
“Yes.”
“Why me?” His gaze held her eyes, seeing the flicker of hesitation in their green depths. “Hagen said it was because
I
was the man for the job. As far as I can see, any one of his male agents would have sufficed to provide … cover for you.”
Sarah’s mind recalled an answer to a question she had asked her superior, the same question Rafferty Lewis had just posed.
“Rafferty Lewis was an assistant district attorney at a ridiculously young age
,” her boss had told her.
“Unfortunately, he had a problem playing political games. Joshua Long hired him, ostensibly to handle his legal affairs. He and his partner do that, of course, but Lewis is also a dollar-a-year man for the government. He’s done some work for the Justice Department, and has been in on a couple of crime commissions and task forces. He’s a pilot, and he holds a sharpshooter rating with all handguns. He’s also extraordinarily cool under
pressure and has an ability to fit himself into any situation he encounters. Gets about as nervous as a bag of cement.”
Sarah shook her head slightly, as her thoughts returned to the present. “I can’t answer you very well, I’m afraid. Hagen simply told me that you were the best he knew for this assignment.”
Rafferty, with recent events very much in mind, shook his head slightly. “That man was born with a motive behind him,” he said dryly. “From what I’ve seen, he has a reason for every action he takes, and every choice he makes. How long have you worked for him?”
“Oh, several years,” she said, vague. “But his—our—organization is a large one; I only met him when he briefed me on this assignment.”
Rafferty watched her cross slim, tanned legs, reminding himself that he was feeling suspicious and nothing more. Certainly nothing more. But his wayward mind persisted in thinking that she had the most fantastic legs,
and what did it matter that she was either lying or concealing something from him?
“Then you”—he cleared his throat of a tendency toward hoarseness—“have never worked with him personally?”
“No.”
Remembering Raven, he asked, “What’s your specialty?”
“I told you. I’m a cryptographer.”
“Puzzles, coded messages and information—like that?”
“Like that.”
All Rafferty’s instincts, legal and otherwise, warned him that he’d better get all the information he could before this thing began. Past experience told him there might well be little time for it later. At the moment, however, he couldn’t think of many questions to ask. Except the ones he couldn’t ask, the ones he wanted very badly to ask, the ones having nothing to do with the assignment.
“Did you love your husband very much?”
“Can you forget him?”
“Could you want me?”
He cleared his throat again. “I see. Well, if I have the sequence of events correctly, we’re to check into another hotel here in Trinidad for a couple of days, then board the yacht and set sail for some country.… What was it?”
“Kadeira. It’s northwest of here.”
“Yes, I’ve heard of it. And while we sail around Kadeira, we’re supposed to make contact with the operative with the coded information?”
She hesitated. “Um … sort of. Actually, the agent is more or less incommunicado because of his cover. We have to go to him.”
Rafferty drummed his long fingers soundlessly on the arm of his chair as he forced himself to consider this second disconcerting aspect of the situation. And he knew now why Hagen had been so evasive in naming their destination. Rafferty would have laughed in his face if he’d been told they were actually to go into Kadeira. “Correct me if I’m wrong,” he said morosely, “but isn’t Kadeira having political and social difficulties at the moment? The
kinds of difficulties which make it inadvisable for tourists to visit the island?”
She was chewing her bottom lip, drawing his gaze despite all his good intentions and nagging suspicions, causing his heart to pound heavily and every muscle of his body to tighten, and her soft voice sounded as if it were afraid of itself.
“Uh, yes. The president there claims it isn’t a revolution and that he’s in control, but there have been a few incidents in the past months involving American tourists. They don’t get many tourists,” she added.
His fingers drummed faster. Dammit, why couldn’t he take his eyes off her? “Yes. As I recall from the news reports, a salesman from Wichita was arrested for being a spy. Bit paranoid, aren’t they?”
She looked uneasy for a moment. “He was released,” she offered.
“Uh-huh. But the toy manufacturer from Billings hasn’t been seen in over a month.”
Her eyes widened, but Sarah Cavell had nothing to say.
Rafferty stopped drumming long enough to run his fingers through his thick copper hair. His tawny eyes frowned at her. “Tell me, did Hagen suggest we go into this island paradise armed? Or are we being given diplomatic immunity to perform an act that Kadeira’s president—judging by his record—would certainly consider an act of espionage?”
Sarah examined her long, bronze-lacquered nails. “About guns, personal choice, Hagen said. I should mention, I couldn’t hit the side of a barn if I was standing next to it.”
“Great,” Rafferty muttered, becoming unwillingly fascinated in a horrified kind of way. “And the rest?”
She seemed to find the secrets of the universe in the metallic gleam of her nails. “Oh … no diplomatic or political immunity for us, I’m afraid. Kadeira doesn’t exactly recognize American nationals as being … worthy of such honors. We’re reasonably safe outside the three-mile limit, but once inside Kadeira …”
“And how,” Rafferty asked carefully, “are
we supposed to get inside Kadeira? Being unworthy American nationals, I mean?”
“Hagen said that it’s been arranged.”
“Oh, did he? Did he happen to mention just
how
it’s been arranged?”
“No.”
Rafferty began to entertain notions of locating the elusive Hagen and choking the information out of him. It was a blissful possibility while it lasted. He sighed. “I see. We just leap blindly into this thing, trusting Hagen beyond the limits of sanity. Do you happen to speak Spanish?” He watched her shake her head slowly, and wasn’t surprised. “Neither do I. And from what I’ve seen of the rare news footage, neither of us looks as if we belong in Kadeira. How in the name of hell are we supposed to get into that country without getting ourselves arrested?”
Sarah lifted her hands in a kind of shrug and tried a smile that she couldn’t quite pull off. “Hagen said it’s all arranged,” she repeated softly.
Rafferty wished he smoked. Or drank to
excess. Any escape would have been pleasant at the moment. “Right. Well, ignoring that question for the moment, what about later? Once we’re inside Kadeira, how do we make contact with the agent holding the information?”
Sarah studied her nails again. “We’ll receive a signal from him to arrange a meeting. At the meeting, we’ll receive the information, which I’m to verify. Then we just … leave Kadeira.”
“Just leave Kadeira,” Rafferty repeated, fascinated. “Tell me—since I definitely have a need to know—just what is this information we’re going after?”
She sent him a fleeting glance. In a very soft voice, she replied, “It has to do with an organization operating out of Kadeira.”
“What
kind
of organization?” he asked with careful politeness.
Sarah was chewing her lip again. “Terrorist.”
Rafferty closed his eyes briefly. If she chewed her lip once more, he decided, he was going to lunge. He could certainly think of worse ways to begin what was looking more
and more like a nightmare. “That’s what I was afraid of. So. We’re going after information which, if we are caught, will clearly brand us both as spies and will certainly get us shot—at the very least. And our fearless leader Hagen will no doubt call out the marines if we’re arrested and labeled as spies?”
She brought her nails closer to her face and gazed at them, frowning. “Well … there are problems with that. We aren’t supposed to be conducting covert operations down there. And we would—legally—be in the wrong if we were caught.” She linked her fingers together, resting them in her lap, and lifted pleading green eyes to his face. “So we’re pretty much on our own, I’m afraid.”
Rafferty tried to resist those eyes. He
really
tried. But somehow he found all his wrathful dismay seeping slowly from his trained legal mind. His trained legal mind, in fact, seemed disposed to make fanciful and utterly ridiculous comparisons between green eyes and absurd things like priceless gems and bottomless lagoons.
“I think—” He cleared his throat violently and tried again. “I think we’re both fools.”
Sarah Cavell, watching that lean and handsome face, silently had to agree. With her part of it, at least. She was a fool. She was a fool because a stranger had opened a hotel room door, and looked down at her with surprised tawny gold eyes, and she had forgotten why she was there. She had forgotten the assignment, the dangers, and her own serious lack of training for situations such as this promised to be.
She had all but forgotten her name.
What she had not forgotten, what Hagen had impressed on her strongly, was that Rafferty Lewis was off-limits. He would be her professional partner for the next three weeks or so, but any other involvement was impossible. He had, Hagen had told her quietly, buried a young wife only a few months before. A much-beloved wife. But she wasn’t to mention that, because Rafferty had not recovered from his loss, would probably never recover.
Sarah was only dimly aware of hot tears welling up in her eyes at the thought. Hers was
a soft heart, unsuited to the work ahead of her, and she tended to cry for anyone burdened with pain. She wanted to cry for Rafferty’s young wife, and for him, but blinked back the tears fiercely; not for anything would she expose the man’s raw grief to even her own compassion. Meeting his eyes, she found them rather startled, and realized he had seen the unshed tears. She spoke quickly. “I guess we should find the other hotel, then.”
“I guess so. My bags are waiting downstairs.”
She rose to her feet, absently smoothing the pale cream silk dress that complemented her golden tan so well. “I’ll—I’ll get a cab for us and wait outside.”
Still disturbed by her tears, Rafferty racked his brain to remember what had been said to upset her. Heaven knew he didn’t want her to cry. Tears in those vivid green eyes roused strange feelings inside him. It was worse than watching small white teeth bite into a full lower lip.
He couldn’t think what could have made
her cry. Unless … was she worried that he might refuse to accompany her? Or had he inadvertently said something to remind her of her recent tragic loss? Frustrated, he could think of no way to ask without bringing it out into the open, and he had promised Hagen.…
At a luxurious hotel on the other end of Trinidad, Mr. and Mrs. Rafferty Lewis checked in late that Friday afternoon. They were accompanied by mounds of baggage, and it was obvious that they were, if not a honeymoon couple, then at the very least newly wed and still delighted with marriage. The bride wore a spectacular diamond beside her gold wedding band, and the groom wore his own wide band with pride.