Dare Me, page 17
"What do you know about the code?" she asked, dropping all pretense.
"I know that it's likely hidden somewhere in this house. I also know that I've had a crack team searching for two weeks and . . . nothing."
"So give up," she suggested coolly. "Turn the house over to T-45 and get the hell out of my way."
"No can do, Macy. We know that when the terrorists finally take a silo and break the launch code, they plan to point that intercontinental ballistic missile at a U.S. target. This is a national security issue. T-45 needs to butt out."
Macy watched Dante survey the room as he waited for her reply, his eyes assessing the vintage furnishings with cool familiarity, never lingering on one thing, other than the mirror, for more than a split second. Typical. And to think she'd once found his arrogance exciting.
"A consortium of Russian industrialists has hired T-45 to find the code," she told him. "That's what we intend to do."
He mulled her admission for a moment, then grinned cryptically. "The same consortium that should have disarmed the missiles over a decade ago? We were wondering how they'd try to cover their asses."
"Now you know."
"Makes no difference. I have the house, but no code. You have nothing."
Macy ran her hand through her hair, somewhat surprised to catch Dante's eyes softening as she did so. What was he up to? "You're wrong. I have me. I'm the best finder in the business. You supervised my training, remember? How long did I take to excel beyond the Arm's rudimentary procedures? Weeks? Months? I'll find the code."
"But you need access to the house."
Macy knew she'd regret her next move, but she had no choice. She had a mission to complete. She couldn't allow her pent-up feelings toward Dante to keep her from achieving her objective.
"So let's deal," she offered.
He leaned back into a Georgian antique library chair, the winged back surrounding him like the high neck of a vampire's cape. She should have been immune to his mysterious allure by now, but obviously she wasn't. Not that his charisma mattered—so long as she had the spirit of a good fight in her bones, she'd remain safe from his magnetic pull.
"I'd hoped you'd want to bargain," he said. "In fact, I have a proposal in mind that I believe you'll find quite tempting."
God, she was going to regret this. "Let's hear it."
He folded his hands together and steepled his long fingers. She couldn't fight the tiny chill chasing up her spine.
"I'll allow you access to any and all rooms in the house, one at a time, over the course of the next week. I'll clear all Arm agents from the premises. Your work will be entirely secure. Once you have
the code, you can take the sequence back to the consortium, though I will insist that the Arm receive a duplicate code in case the industrialists do not work in the best interest of the United States."
Macy was a lot of things, but gullible wasn't one of them.
"What's the catch?"
He grinned and his eyes slanted into a stare that was nothing short of predatory. "I want you." "Excuse me?"
He stood and crossed the room in three smooth steps. On instinct, Macy drew her gun, just in time to press the barrel against the taut muscles of his stomach. The force of the steel against his vulnerable flesh didn't seem to faze him one iota.
In fact, he looked down at her with amusement dancing in his gray eyes. "Need I say it twice, love? I want you, and if you wish to search my house, I intend to have you. In any and all ways possible."
If he'd had any sense at all, he would have worn his Kevlar this morning. As the luridness of his offer slowly seeped into Macy's brain, the jab of the gun against his gut increased. If she was any other woman and he'd made the same sexual offer, he wouldn't have entertained even an inkling of fear that he'd be turned down, much less that he'd be shot for his audacity. But he wasn't dealing with any other woman. Macy Rush not only had motive, and now opportunity, to kill him, she had enough justification to warrant an immediate acquittal from any court in the land.
"Offer denied," she said, her words seething through her teeth. "Try again."
He shifted his position, but Macy simply shoved the gun farther into his stomach. He'd ordered his men to leave him and Macy alone and knew they
wouldn't disobey unless shots were fired. Too late for him at that point, but at least the house wouldn't fall into the hands of T-45. Not that he was worried. Odds remained that the terrorists who'd made the threat would not. have the manpower to bring their plan to fruition. Still, Dante had learned long ago that most international anarchists did not reveal their intentions to their enemies unless they were confident of their ultimate success.
And yet, time was on his side. With Macy looking for the code, he figured he'd have the crucial combination in a matter of days. He could afford to hitch the mission on his own personal agenda. He couldn't change the past, but the future was ripe for the taking.
Just like Macy.
Boldly, he pressed closer so that her breasts crushed against his chest. The old fire they'd once shared instantly sparked. He could see the attraction in her crystal blue eyes. He could feel the lust in the stiffening of his sex.
"My offer stands, Macy. I want you back. Truth be told, I never wanted you to leave."
"Then you shouldn't have betrayed me."
"I can explain that."
He didn't bother to try, though. Even before her eyes narrowed with keen disbelief, he knew Macy wasn't ready to listen. Any explanation he offered now would fall on ears deafened by anger and righteous indignation—reactions he'd expected, anticipated, even planned for. If he had to choose from the full range of Macy's fiery emotions, anger wouldn't have been his first choice to deal with—but it sure as hell beat indifference.
"You've had ten years to create an elaborate explanation for your actions, Dante. I can only imagine what spin you've come up with. But I don't want to hear excuses. Not now. Not ever. I'm only interested in finding the code."
He leaned slightly forward, so that his breath teased her wispy red bangs. "I'm offering you the chance to find the code with virtually no interference from the Arm. All you have to do is let me make love to you."
Without warning, Macy pocketed her gun and stepped away. She shrugged her jacket closed, but not before he noticed the telltale peaks of her nipples through her smoky blue silk blouse. The sight evoked a surge through his blood that heightened his confidence and libido. Yes, he wanted her. That much he'd known. But she wanted him, too—whether she liked it or not.
Chemistry was a powerful thing.
"You're becoming sloppy in your old age, Dante, allowing personal desires to interfere with a mission."
Dante shrugged nonchalantly, but his eyes remained trained on Macy as she stalked around the room. She'd already begun her search.
He crossed his arms, bracing himself against the powerful effect she had over him. Yes, he wanted her, but he wasn't about to tip his hand, not when the prize was so worth the danger of the game. "I'm merely attempting to accomplish two crucial goals at one time. In fact, the economy of my plan is quite impressive. It's win-win."
Macy speared him with a spiteful glare. "This is the best you can do to seduce me? Hinge the success of my mission on my having sex with you?"
He grinned. "Brilliant, isn't it? Flowers and poetry don't move you, my love. They never have. But dangle the carrot of another successful mission in front of you and you can't resist."
Macy pressed her lips tightly together and he could see her fists flex inside the pockets of her jacket, straining against the leather. Like him, Macy was a professional liar. She could fool the best that the world's intelligence agencies offered. But so could he. Even from the beginning, they'd learned that lying to each other was a complete waste of time. He'd managed to feed her a mistruth only once since he'd known her and that decision had cost him her love.
Love he was determined to get back.
"Macy, you must admit," he continued, "that I've taken good care of myself over the years. I'm not unattractive. I can't imagine you'd consider sleeping with me such a huge sacrifice."
She arched a dark red brow. "Are you so hard up?"
"No, just hard."
He didn't bother glancing at his crotch to drive his point home.
"That's crass," she sniped. "No, that's honest."
Without response, she stepped into the foyer, moving around the partitioning wall so she could see fully into the house—and escape his close scrutiny. From the street, the cottage appeared relatively small, though he had no doubt she'd studied the blueprints during her mission prep. But now that she was finally inside, she would recognize the impressive scope of the layout. The nooks and crannies built into the walls—the overflow of antiques that filled nearly every space.
On his orders, nothing had been removed from the house and every piece of bric-a-brac had been x-rayed, examined, catalogued and then returned to its original space. Even the precise arrangements of the knick-knacks, chairs, settees and claw-footed tables had been studied for patterns that could lead them to the code.
But so far, the Arm agents had come up empty. The code, likely a collection of letters, numbers and symbols, could literally be anywhere in the house.
He followed Macy as she assessed the scope of her mission, stopping when his groin nearly brushed against her backside. He took a moment to close his eyes and inhale the subtle scent of her perfume, a cool aroma tinged with sharp lemon, refreshing mint and soothing chamomile. When he opened his eyes, he realized how close he'd leaned in. His nose was less than an inch from her hair.
He wanted her beyond reason. At one time he'd questioned the depth of his need, even railed against the connection that floated only a step below obsession. But now he accepted that his love simply ran deep and a man like him could stop at nothing until he won back the woman who owned his heart.
"I refuse your offer," she said coolly.
"You have no alternative."
"I could kill you."
"Then my men would kill you. Neither the Arm nor T-45 would have the code, all because you don't want to face what we once had together."
"What we once had died the day you betrayed me." To her credit, her voice remained steady and strong.
"Maybe. Are you courageous enough to find out for sure?"
Macy glanced over her shoulder, her eyes narrow slits of blue. "I know for sure, the same way that I know I'll find the code."
She stepped away again and tapped her large stud earring, then extracted a hair-thin wire that stretched from her ear to her mouth. The fiber-optic communicator glowed green at the tip. "This is Rush, reporting in."
As the agent monitoring her message replied, she brushed beyond him to the front window.
"Patch me directly to Marshall. We've got a little problem."
The burn of his stare scorched the back of her neck, but Macy refused to turn around. She'd once thought Dante Burke couldn't be any more arrogant and confident than he had been ten years ago when they'd first met—he the master agent and she the rookie spy. How wrong she'd been. Now she was one of the most sought-after "finders" in the covert operations business, the next in line to helm T-45, the quintessential elite spy organization envied by everyone from the CIA to MI5 and Mossad. And yet, Dante Burke wanted to bargain for her body.
Well, he could have her goddamned body. It was her heart he truly wanted—and that he'd never possess. Never again.
"Marshall, here. Do you have the house?"
"Negative," Macy answered. "The Arm owns the property. Has for two weeks."
"Why didn't we know?" Marshall asked.
Macy winced. "Sometimes, the Arm covers their tracks fairly well."
Abe showed his annoyance with a series of unintelligible grumblings. None of the agents who worked for Abercrombie Marshall ever admitted to understanding when their boss's voice lowered to a gruff mumble—likely because no one wanted to know what the man was saying. He was probably firing them all, and if they asked him to speak up, the dismissal would become permanent.
"How many agents on-site?" he finally asked with clarity.
"Unknown. Burke is here. He's doing the bargaining."
"The Arm doesn't negotiate with T-45."
Macy pushed aside the sheers blocking the light from the window. Through the low-hanging branches from the century-old oak outside, she spied her fellow T-45 agents, glad they'd been sent to watch her back. Unfortunately, just a few steps away, disguised quite effectively as a man painting a garden fence and another as a carpenter repairing a broken shutter, were two Arm operatives. A standoff between the two organizations would clearly get them nowhere.
"Apparently, the Arm will negotiate today. He's offering me full access to the house. His agents have failed to find anything of use after two weeks of searching."
"Maybe there is nothing to find," Abe offered. Macy shook her head, her chest tightening. For as long as she'd been working with Abercrombie Marshall, he'd always shown the utmost confidence in her instincts and her deductive skills. She'd left the Arm—and Dante—because neither the top dogs in the organization nor her lover trusted her as implicitly as Abe. And she'd never proved him wrong. So why, after all this time, did the sharp sting of even a logical question still remain?
"No," she insisted, determined to shake the topsyturvy reaction to having Dante back in her presence, much less her life. "I studied Bogdanov's journal and letters. I've interviewed him myself. The code is here. I'm positive."
"Bogdanov is insane, Macy."
This much was true. Grigoriy Bogdanov, once the golden boy of Soviet computer science, had been examined by T-45's elite neurologists from New York, London and Tokyo. They all agreed that the man who had designed and implemented the newest computer system to operate the nuclear silos for the Russian government suffered from an extremely aggressive form of dementia. His moments of clarity were few and far between, and no combination of medication or therapy had been able to reverse the damage to his brain cells or coax the healthy pathways of his mind to reveal the information only he possessed—the countercode that would render all attempts to launch the nuclear warheads useless.
Macy had spent a rigorous week with Bogdanov after T-45 pulled him into protective custody from the bucolic mental institution where his wife had stashed him—the very wife who'd turned up dead just one day after the terrorists transmitted their first threat to the Russian government. Macy knew that further attempts to extract the code from Bogdanov's memory were impossible, but she also believed the man too intelligent and too meticulous to store the crucial combination only in a vulnerable human brain. She knew the code existed; she'd tracked it to New Orleans. Now, she simply had to find it.
And to do that, she had to sleep with the man who'd once broken her heart.
"Insanity seems to be running rampant around here," she answered.
Her boss chuckled, his deep bass voice rumbling through the state-of-the-art connection with thunderous clarity. Abercrombie Marshall had been with T-45 for as long as anyone in the business could remember. Like her, he was an American ex-patriot spy denied a chance to rise through the ranks of the intelligence community in the United States—he because of his race, she on account of her tarnished reputation, courtesy of Dante Burke.
"What does he want in exchange for his unexpected cooperation?" Abe asked.
Macy glanced over her shoulder. Dante remained standing near the threshold to the parlor, his incredible body framed by the archway, his silver eyes locked on her with pure, unadulterated lust.
"He wants a copy of the countercode in case our clients don't use the combination to benefit the United States."
Abe paused. Macy turned back toward the window and pressed her eyelids closed, waiting for the question that was sure to come.
"That's not all he wants. Damn it, Macy, he wants you, doesn't he?"
"Affirmative."
"I should order you out of there," Abe said, his deep voice brimming with anger.
"Why? There are worse things a woman could do to save the world, right?"
With a smirk, she disconnected the call and turned back to Dante, straightening her spine and tilting her chin upward so he knew he hadn't beaten her. Despite the traitorous thrill that snaked through her bloodstream at the thought of his hands on her flesh again, pleasuring her in ways only he ever had, she knew one thing with perfect clarity—he could have her body, but he'd never, ever, sneak back into her soul.
Exhaustion pressed Macy onto the bed around one o'clock in the morning, her body jostling the secured laptop computer lying on the mattress so that a strobe of metallic blue light flashed across the darkened room. Even after she closed her eyes, her vision swam with schematics, code markers and patterns. The key points from the dozens of Arm reports she'd read before daybreak repeated in her brain like mantras to failure, all spoken to her in the melodious baritone voice of Dante Burke. The sensual timbre of his voice so invaded her mind that she didn't hear him when he actually called her name from the doorway.
She grunted in response.
"Have a hard day?" he asked.
With annoyance giving a shot of spitfire to her spent energy, she turned her head to see him leaning
against the threshold to her room. In a white shirt rolled up at the sleeves and expertly tailored slacks in cool slate gray, he was the epitome of casual style. He'd loosened his hair so that his rakish dark locks nearly touched his strong, square shoulders. He'd pulled out all the stops in ensuring that, at least physically, he was perfect.
She, on the other hand, undoubtedly resembled a dishrag that had been used to wipe down a filthy kitchen. Working through the puzzles that were Bogdanov's kitchen and parlor from dawn until long after dusk wiped the sparkle off a woman. If he didn't find her irresistible tonight, so much the better.
