Seducing the Mercenary

Which is why the Laroque-Ubasi situation had been instantly outsourced to the FDS, an objective organization, while the CIA could be seen to be dealing with its own internal security issues. Blake had no doubt the FDS would effectively eliminate Jean-Charles Laroque and pave the way to stability in the Gulf of Guinea.

But that didn’t solve the disclosure of his men’s identities. That was the problem that burned him. That was what would come back to haunt him.

He shoved his chair back, stood, unscrewed his bottle of pills, popped two into his mouth. This clandestine cooperation with the Pentagon only confounded things. He’d been put hands-on in charge of the new joint task force, and any failure would reflect directly on him. He chewed his medication slowly, thinking. This business was full of mirrors and shadows and smoke—one never really knew who or what one was dealing with. Or what the agenda was. He could use this to his advantage.

But getting off this particular tiger was going to be tricky. Maybe impossible. It could even cost him his life. If Blake was to have any chance of actually riding this one out, Laroque had to take the fall for the agents’ deaths.

If Laroque died with Washington believing the tyrant had somehow discovered the CIA agents’ identities on his own, the mystery—all the niggling questions—would die with him. Then Blake’s problem would simply disappear.

There was just one little hitch—the profiler. The FDS had insisted on this approach. Blake had been dead set against it. He didn’t need some academic from New York declaring the tyrant fit for capture, he needed him dead.

He glanced at the calendar on his desk.

The FDS profiler had less than one week to make her move. It had damned well better be the right one.

03:17 Zulu. Saturday, November 9. Ubasi Palace

Emily lay on the king-size bed staring at the impossibly high ceiling. The door had been bolted from the outside. When she’d protested, the guards had said it was for her own safety. The balcony was too high to climb down. She’d checked.

She was imprisoned like a damn princess in a castle tower.

Her bags had been delivered to the room, but her computer, phone, camera and knife were all still missing. Emily had little doubt Laroque was going through her things with a fine-tooth comb, checking out her story—her identity.

She told herself she shouldn’t worry. It was state-of-the-art military issue, and everything was encrypted. The FDS techs were among the best in the world. They’d have been careful not to leave digital clues. Laroque wouldn’t find a thing.

So why didn’t she feel more secure?

She figured the only reason she was still here in his castle boudoir was so that he could thoroughly check her cover story. Perhaps he hadn’t believed a single word she’d said. She wondered if she’d even see him again.

Emily tossed irritably on the Egyptian cotton sheets as the wind moaned up in the parapets and rattled at the French doors on her little stone balcony.

The more she thought about it, the more she really liked the idea of a book. Laroque exhibited classic Alpha Dog pathology, yet he’d only recently become a dictator, which meant she had an opportunity to witness a monster-in-the-making. Scoring a one-on-one interview with Le Diable would not only secure her FDS mission, it could earn her academic prestige down the road.

It would give her something to take back to New York.

Emily desperately needed some sort of professional—and personal—validation after being so thoroughly humiliated by her ex and her peers. Anger surged through her at the memory. She sat up abruptly in the bed, forced out pent-up breath with a puff of her cheeks.

She did not want to go back to New York a failure.

The fiasco she’d left at home had forced her to question everything about herself, every choice she’d ever made in life—from her career to the men she dated. And she really didn’t want to face those questions. Not now. Not yet. Maybe never, if she could help it.

She wanted excitement, adrenaline, something big to focus on right now, other than herself.

This wasn’t running, she told herself. Sometimes you just needed distance.

She slid off the bed, snagged the water jug on the dresser and poured herself a glass. She took a swig but the liquid balled in her throat.

Her eyes began to burn and hurt tightened her chest.

She’d trusted her ex.

Hell, she’d even thought she loved him. But it had just been a game—a bet he’d taken with his colleagues that he could not only bed the brainy ice queen, but make her fall for him.

She plunked the glass down, shoved her hair back from her face and cursed viciously.

She had fallen for him. His name was Dr. Anthony Dresden. He was much older, an esteemed university professor who did consulting at her clinic. Not only had he made a mockery of her, but he’d lured her across a line she should never have dared cross—that line between personal and professional. A vital line in a field like hers.

What made it worse was the fact she’d once confided to Anthony that she was concerned about her consistent attraction to dominant and physically powerful males—men like her dad. She’d told Anthony she was beginning to think she subconsciously found ways to sabotage her relationships with men like this as soon as they showed signs of getting serious. That’s why her relationships never lasted more than eighteen months. She invariably grew afraid that if she committed wholly to the alpha guy in her life she’d be trapped. That he’d undermine her independence and ultimately quash her. Like her dad had quashed her mother.

To death.

Emily was deeply afraid of not being in control, always. Because in her heart, Emily was terrified that she was really just like her mom. Weak.

Dr. Anthony Dresden, a man she’d once respected on so many levels, had used her secret fears against her.

He’d taken a substantial monetary bet one very drunken night over dinner with a group of his—and her—male colleagues. He’d wagered he could seduce the brainy ice queen—that’s what they called her—and make her fall for him. He’d bet he could date her longer than any of her previous relationships. He’d told his friends that it was more than sex for Emily, you had to get her at her own game, a mind game.

It was pure betrayal.

When their relationship had gone over that eighteen-month hurdle, Emily’s heart had begun to feel light, as if a huge weight had been lifted from her. She thought she might be truly in love, that Anthony was the one.

Tears slid hotly and angrily down Emily’s face.

He hadn’t collected on the bet.

When she’d found out about it via the grapevine, she’d been devastated. Anthony told her he’d called the bet off because he’d come to care deeply for her. He said it had been a lark, something he should never have allowed to happen. He’d pleaded with her for the relationship to continue. That’s what made it worse—the fact that he said he really did love her.

All he’d done was reinforce her deep-rooted pathological fears. Because in a powerfully intellectual and physically subtle way, Anthony was an alpha himself. She’d fallen for his calculated seduction, and he’d used her own mind against her. And everyone who mattered in her career knew about it.

Emily threw herself back onto the pillow and closed her eyes tight. No, she could not go home.

Not yet.

Not until she’d proved something to herself.

05:45 Zulu. Saturday, November 9. Ubasi Palace

A soft peach bled into the ink sky. Monkeys stirred in the branches below, and the sound of birds rose in a soft chatter. Laroque stood on his balcony, hands flat on the balustrade, surveying the dark jungle canopy.

The storm had blown through, and he was enjoying the rich scent of fecund earth. In a few hours the forest would be an oppressive place, steaming under the sun’s fire. He liked these predawn hours best.

He hadn’t slept, but he was used to not sleeping. He’d learned since a boy how to push, and keep pushing, to rest only when the battle had been won. He wouldn’t be alive otherwise.

“Sir?”

He spun round to face Mathieu Ebongani, the technician who’d been busy with Emma’s equipment.

“Mathieu, did you find anything?”