Crazy Love (8 page)

They weren’t friends, and the rhetoric was typical warlord, but Royce knew Negara could and would deliver on his threat. Still, he had to wonder if anyone had ever told Hamzah Negara about Superman, or Creed Rivera, the SDF operator who had not only snatched Dominika Starkova out from under Royce’s nose last January, but married her. Cody Rivera was the woman’s name now.

Those boys knew slaughter. Royce could guarantee it. He’d seen Creed’s handiwork. He’d never met Peter “Kid Chaos” Chronopolous, another SDF operator, but his reputation was the stuff legends were made out of—legends and bad guys’ nightmares.

None of which was Royce’s concern. If Negara wanted to sacrifice a few of his guys going up against SDF on their home turf, that was his business. Royce’s business was Hart, and it was personal. He didn’t need to kill the guy himself. He just wanted him dead.

CHAPTER

8

G
IVE THEM
an inch.

Dylan couldn’t believe what he was seeing, or how much of it there was to see.

And they’ll take a mile.

The invitation to the reception, all the necessary identification, and the gel prints of Whitfield’s fingertips had been waiting for him in their hotel suite when he and Skeeter had arrived. But there was more, ever so much more.

“What”—he made a flailing gesture at all the gear piled and stacked in the living area between the suite’s two bedrooms—“what
is
all this stuff?”

He turned to look at Skeeter, who was standing protectively in front of a small tower of high-impact equipment cases, her arms crossed in front of her chest, looking mutinous.

“It’s our kit for the mission.”

Kit?

She’d turned an elegant three-room suite at the Hotel Lafayette into a freaking armory.

He walked over and opened the top case in the stack behind her.

“A submachine gun?”
Geezus.

“It’s an HK UMP45.”

Obviously.

He cocked an eyebrow in her direction.

“A Heckler and Koch Universal Machine Pistol in .45 caliber,” she explained.

Fine. Great. He didn’t care what she called it, the weapon he was looking at was a submachine gun—in .45 ACP, with a folding stock.

Okay. That was pretty cool. He wasn’t the shoot-out artist Kid was, but when he did shoot somebody, he preferred to do it with a .45 rather than a 9mm. He liked his terminal ballistics to be as terminal as possible.

“I requested two from Grant’s office, one for each of us,” she added, “and fourteen 25-round magazines.”

Two subguns and enough ammo to stage a Third World coup—he squelched a sigh and refrained from shaking his head. She had never worked with him before, not really, not on one of his missions, so she couldn’t have been expected to know how he operated, which was very, very low profile. A laptop, a brain, a cell phone, a concealed sidearm, a pair of gloves, and a few tools for breaking and entering—that was usually enough to get him through a heist.

He moved the UMP onto the bed and opened the larger case underneath.

“A sniper rifle?”

“A Knight Match SR-25 in .308 with a PVS-10 day/night scope and infrared light source.”

He did let out a breath at that, kind of a heavy breath.

“And a laser range finder,” she added.

Of course.

“You are going to be on the ground, in the car, in Whitfield’s driveway, not on a rooftop somewhere, doing overwatch with a badass long rifle trained on the senator’s historic mansion.”

The thought made his head spin. He’d
known
he shouldn’t have brought her into this. God only knew what the concierge had thought when Grant’s staff had delivered the stuff.

He pointed toward two large rucksacks leaning against the couch. “What’s in those?”

“Tactical gear,” she said, still with that mutinous look on her face. “And a couple of assault vests for carrying our equipment.”

Just what he needed to go with his tuxedo, a fully rigged-out assault vest.

“Including threat level II soft body armor,” she continued. “In case we get in a situation where people are shooting at us.”

That was
not
going to happen.

“I have been to dozens of receptions for foreign dignitaries in Washington, D.C., and have
never
needed soft body armor.” This is what happened when a guy brought a kick-ass girl to a party. She wanted to kick ass.

“Flex cuffs,” she said, undeterred. “Four each.”

He looked her square in the eye. “We will not be handcuffing anyone tonight. Guaranteed.” Unless it was each other—but his luck didn’t seem to be headed in that direction.

“A three-cell blue diode flashlight.”

Finally, something he could use.

“Thank you. That will come in handy.”

“Tac II combat knife.”

“No.” There would be no mano a mano knife fighting at the senator’s tonight.

“AN/PVS-7 night vision devices.”

“Unnecessary.”

“Ground/air locator strobe with IR hood.”

“Unnecessary.”

“Fifty feet of five-fifty cord and ten feet of hundred-mile-per-hour tape—each.”

“Always handy, but in this instance, unnecessary,” he said firmly.

“Fragmentation grenades.”

Sweet freaking sonuvabitch.

“Fragmentation grenades,” he said calmly, trying not to imagine just exactly how much damage a well-thrown frag could do to the Whitfield ball room and the three hundred or so guests who would be in attendance.

Enough to get him the electric chair, he decided.

And Skeeter, too.

The look he was giving her must have said as much.

“I’ve got a feeling about tonight. That’s all,” she said, still standing stoically in front of her outrageous stacks of gear.

Yeah, he had a feeling, too, and it was spelled D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R—unless he kept a lid on things, unless he kept a lid on her, a screw-on, lock-top lid.

“Sidearms?” he asked. She’d confirmed the request on the plane. The guns had to be here some where in all this stuff.

“A Glock 21 for you and a Para-Ordnance LTC for me, both in .45 caliber.”

“Thank you.” That was all he needed, a loaded .45 and a spare magazine.

“Five magazines for the Glock. Thirteen rounds each.”

Okay, fine. Four extra magazines. He’d only be taking one with him.

“I’m going to grab a quick shower,” he said, “and shave, then we’ll head over to Whitfield’s and make sure everything is laid out the way it is on the plans we’ve been looking at all day. I don’t suppose you’ve got a pair of binoculars in there?” He gestured at the rucksacks.

She nodded. “Steiner Predator, 8×42.”

Of course she had binoculars, he thought. They’d be packed next to the kitchen sink.

THEY
were the perfect Georgetown couple, Dylan thought two hours later, him in his button-down shirt and conservative dark suit, and her in fishnet and combat boots, looking stunningly beautiful.

He’d put his foot down about the ball cap. The damn thing was not to be seen again for as long as they were in Washington, no argument. So she’d put her hair up, piled it every which way on top of her head, and just let it fan out all over the place and trail down the sides of her face, with a few loose strands drifting down her back, all white blond and silky against white lace and hot pink. It made her look older, sophisticated, like she knew her way around.

It made her look old enough for anything, and everything about her looking old enough for anything put him on overload, every hip-rolling stride, every dangling tendril, every breath she took.

They’d had their late-afternoon lattes, and reconned Whitfield’s from the café’s streetside patio. Grant’s intel had been impeccable, as usual. The plan Dylan and Hawkins had put together should work without a hitch,
would
work without a hitch. There wasn’t room for failure. There wasn’t time.

Any time, for anything, least of all indecision.

He checked his watch. They had four hours before they planned to arrive at the party. A lot of anything could happen in four hours, especially if two people had finished their recon work, felt good about their plan, and were alone in a three-room suite at the Hotel Lafayette—naked.

He let his gaze drift over her. She’d stopped in front of a shop with bins of merchandise set up on the sidewalk. It was all very colorful, piles of small, embroidered purses with bits of mirror, leather wallets, belts, and scarves, all very high-end. One belt in particular had caught her eye. Black leather, of course, with silver conchas, it was exquisite, with a price tag to match.

He pulled out his wallet and peeled off two hundred and fifty dollars to pay the clerk.

“Happy birthday,” he said when Skeeter looked up at him, her eyebrow quirked in that slightly offkilter way.

Another woman might have demurred, put up a fuss, played coy. Not Skeeter Bang. She had enough of the street rat left in her to know a good deal when she was handed one.

“Thanks.” She grinned and looked down to buckle it over the chain-mail belt already hanging on her denim miniskirt. The buckle was a bit complicated, though, and after a few moments of watching her not quite get it right, he took the two ends of the belt and slipped them together himself.

Big mistake.

He had to stand way too close to get the job done. The backs of his fingers brushed against the soft, bare skin of her midriff, and she still had that sweet, sugar smell on her. It wasn’t cheap perfume. Cheap perfume made him sneeze. This made him crazy.

“What’s your perfume?” he asked. It wasn’t doughnut sugar, not after all day.

“Cookies.”

“Cookies?” He slipped the buckle tang into a hole.

“There’s a fragrance designer out of L.A. that Katya knows, and Cookies is his newest perfume,” she said.

Katya Hawkins, of course. Superman’s wife would know the newest designers and their newest perfumes.

He finished sliding the tail end of the belt through the restraining loop and should have let go of her then. He should have stepped back. Those were the reasonable things to do, but suddenly he wasn’t feeling very reasonable, and instead of moving away, he looked into those damned mirrored sunglasses of hers.

“It’s not on the, uh, market yet,” she said, suddenly sounding a little unsure, but not moving away any more than he was. “Kat got me a sample. She said it reminded her of me.”

No kidding—sugar, sweet, cookies, Skeeter. It reminded him of her, too.

“It’s very nice,” he managed.

This was it. The moment he’d been waiting for—seven months of waiting, seven months of wanting, seven months of running to avoid the inevitable. He was going to kiss her. Now. Before his time ran out. The sun was shining down. A soft wind was blowing, and the wall of heat they were generating between the two of them was damn near electrifying him. Take one step forward, that’s all he needed to do. He’d done it hundreds of times with dozens of women—taken the step, taken the kiss.

He took a breath, nearly moved his foot—but froze instead, his body held in place by the image flickering across the surface of her sunglasses.

Jesus!

Every instinct he had said,
Turn! Face the enemy!
Dylan didn’t flinch.

“What?” she asked, instantly on alert.

“Across the street. Ten o’clock,” he said, giving her the position of the man who’d walked across the mirrors of her sunglasses.

He saw the shift of her gaze behind the lenses.

“Seven, eight, ten people moving at ten o’clock. A family, two women, three men—Asians, mid-twenties to thirties, five feet five to eight, dark shirts, dark pants.”

Three.
Fuck.

“Back of their hands. Tattoos?”

“Minivan, minivan…Sorry, boss, they’re gone.”

“Get back to the hotel.” He turned her around and gave her a little push—but she didn’t budge, at least not in the right direction. With an incredibly smooth move he hadn’t seen coming, she slipped out of his grip and was stepping off the curb, heading across the street.

He reached for her, missed, nearly had a heart attack, and lunged after her, but sonuvabitch, she was already on the move.

Christ.
He’d seen her PT charts. If it came down to a foot race, he was frickin’ toast.

He started after her, dodging traffic. She wasn’t dodging anything. She was sliding, moving with the cars, making every break work for her, and leaving him in the dust. To anyone else watching, she was a leggy blonde crossing the street. He was the only one who would have noticed her hand slide into the leather tote she had bandoliered across her torso, the only one noticing how she’d read the traffic, calculated her moves, and implemented a flawless plan to gain a few seconds’ advantage.

Maybe the Asians were just Japanese tourists, or Bangkok Bobs visiting the U.S. capital. Because what were the chances, really, of them working for Hamzah Negara?

Slim to none to absolutely no-fucking-way none.

It was just that, for a second there, he’d thought he’d recognized the guy he’d seen in her sunglasses. Of course, he was still a little jumpy about the whole awful ordeal on Sumba; so conceivably, the sight of any Asian man reversed in a pair of slightly dusty mirrored sunglasses would be enough to jump-start his adrenal gland.

Jesus,
he thought, stepping back out of the way of a taxi. He needed a vacation, and if he lived past the weekend, he was going to take one, a really long one, the kind of vacation where all he needed was a toothbrush, a towel, and a lover—
her.