Ironclad Cover

She looked like she would have liked to say, none of your business, but said instead, “None. I have no plans for him at all. He followed me when I followed Cavanaugh.”

“Is he linked to him?”

“I don’t know. Yet.”

He nodded. “Find out.” She obviously had no problem with cozying up to the guy. And Lambert had wanted badly whatever she’d been offering. Brant had seen the flash of anger and disappointment in the man’s eyes when he had walked in and interrupted.

Was Anita looking for suspects, links to Cavanaugh and Tsernyakov, or was she looking for allies for her own purposes? Lambert had money, you could tell by looking at him. And with money came influence. Was Anita working him? Sure looked like it from where he was standing.

He didn’t trust her, didn’t trust any of the women, had argued against the mission and lost. He had accepted the assignment of working with the team—somebody with realistic expectations had to be involved—but he still thought it was nothing but an invitation to disaster.

You wanted to know how someone would act in the future, you looked at how he or she had acted in the past. By and large, past behavior predicted future behavior. What the hell were they doing conducting a mission based on criminals?

The way he’d seen Anita play Lambert tonight had left a bad taste in his mouth, an odd reaction since that was exactly what she’d been recruited for. And she had been good, he had to give her that. She had looked the part of a woman about to be seduced.

Anita, more so than the others, bore watching. She was the most beautiful of the four women on the team—dark hair, nearly black, cascading to her waist, the body of a dancer, legs that could mesmerize anyone. He was a sucker for high heels and she worked them like nobody he’d ever known. She was a lethal weapon even when armed with nothing but a smile. And he would just bet she was smart enough to know how to use what she had.

In addition to her intimate knowledge of financial wizardry, those looks had been responsible for getting her involved in the mission. He had picked her himself, from the list of possible candidates.

His attention lingered on her full lips, annoyed as the picture of Michael Lambert kissing her popped into his mind. What did he care?

Then all of a sudden his instincts prickled and he turned his focus to the rest of the room, scanning the tables one by one. Nobody was paying them special attention. Maybe he was just too tired and out of sorts. Still, he had learned to appreciate intuition over the years.

“How about if we have our food wrapped and take it back to my hotel?” he asked, unable to shake the feeling that they were being watched.

“What’s wrong with here?” She didn’t look comfortable with the suggestion.

He glanced around surreptitiously as he took a drink, and from the corner of his eye caught a dark shape at the window, the glint of metal. Instinct honed by years of conflicts in the field pushed him forward. He registered the surprised expression on Anita’s face as he took her down, protecting her, softening her fall.

At the same time, the bottle of mineral water that had a split second ago been in front of her exploded all over their table, showering them with shards of glass from above.

Chapter Two

A woman screamed as people all around ducked for cover. With four years of federal prison and an intensive FBI crash course behind her, Anita managed to stay reasonably calm as she kept her head down.

“Unarmed?” Brant poked his head out, trying to see.

“Sorry.” She had thought about bringing her gun to the Chamber of Commerce reception, but there hadn’t been room to hide it under her slinky dress and her evening bag was barely sufficient to hold her cell phone, a tube of lipstick and the stack of business cards she had collected during the evening. She’d gone to the party to make connections, not to engage in a gunfight. She hadn’t thought the weapon would be necessary.

He didn’t chastise her for the lapse, but pushed her forward. “Let’s go. Toward the kitchen.”

All for getting out of there, she crawled under the tables among people who looked stunned, scared and confused. Spilled food and broken plates littered her path—a few tablecloths had been pulled down in the panic of the moment as people reacted on reflex.

Whispers came from everywhere, punctuated by a few sobs and some swearing. “Where did it come from?” “Is the shooter in here?” “Stay still.”

“Stop moving around. You’ll draw attention,” an older gentleman snapped as Anita pushed by him, then fell silent as he looked at Brant behind her.

She nudged the swinging door open and slipped through into the hot and humid air of the kitchen, which smelled of frying onions and burning oil. She didn’t rise until the metal door was closed behind them and even then she stayed in a crouch.

“This way.” Brant headed to the back.

The man could move. The only two times she’d seen him before—at the Brighton Federal Correctional Institute in Maryland and at their briefing at Quantico, he seemed more the corporate type than law enforcement—crisp suit and calm, professional manners. But right this moment the FBI agent was clearly visible.

They passed kitchen staff huddled in groups some in the cover of refrigerators, others squatting behind the counter.

“Is there a shooter in the restaurant?” one of the cooks, a lanky Chinese man, asked, gripping his white apron with one hand and a meat cleaver in the other. At first glance he seemed prepared to protect the staff, but when Anita looked closer, his darting eyes said he was ready to run.

“Outside,” Brant said. “Stay in here. Call the cops. Where is the back door?”

The man pointed with the cleaver, his arm jumping with nerves when a chair crashed behind them in the dining area.

Brant moved forward. “Let’s get out of here.”

Anita followed him down a narrow hall that led to cavernous storage rooms and stopped when he did at a door with peeling green paint on its wood panels. He paused a second then pushed the door open a few inches to survey the outside. Then he reached back to take her arm and pulled her behind him, into the deep shadows of the night.

The back alley was empty save the Dumpsters. She held her breath at the sour stench. Hundred-degree heat did nasty things to garbage.

“Come on.” He strode to the street and looked in both directions before stepping out from the alley. He walked to the nearest car and had the door open and the motor started in under a minute. “Get in.” The vehicle was in motion before she shut the door behind her.

“Did you see who it was?” She kept her eyes on the street.

“No. Are you hurt? Any of that glass hit you?”

She didn’t feel any pain but looked down at her bare arms anyway. Other than being dirty from the crawling, they looked okay. “I’m fine.”

“Call the others and put them on alert. Call Nick.”

Nick Tarasov was special ops, the man who had trained the four-woman team at Quantico after their release from prison. He had come to the island with them right at the beginning to keep an eye on things.

“Have you heard from him yet?”

Brant shook his head. “He’s only been gone for a day.”

Nick was off to look for Xiau Lin, one of their four remaining suspects who was believed to be on a business trip in China. Marquez and Cavanaugh were on Grand Cayman. They had not been able to locate Ian McGraw so far.

Life at Savall, Ltd. had been relatively calm since Ettori had been shot—a revenge-obsessed hitman who had gone after Carly big-time because Savall had stolen a few of his boss’s clients. After that danger had been taken care of, they had all felt it was safe for Nick to leave them for a while.

Obviously not.

She made the calls, reaching Sam and Carly first. Gina had just gotten in. She had stayed at the party after Anita had left with Law, to see if she could make some useful connections. Nick didn’t pick up. He was probably stalking Lin. She left him a message.

“You think it’s connected to Ettori?” she asked Brant when she was done with the calls and assured everyone that she was all right. She hadn’t fully known until now how Carly had felt for those weeks when she had been under attack. “Maybe he didn’t work alone.”

“He had a driver that one time,” Law said. He was referring to the kidnapping attempt Nick had stopped.

“Right. But that guy never entered the picture again. We assumed he was a one-time deal—a friend helping out.”

“Don’t assume.” He pulled into the hotel parking garage and stopped the car as close to the elevators as possible. “Could be he took over Ettori’s assignment.”