Dangerous to Know (6 page)

Endless seconds ticked by. Outside the open balcony doors, a shrill horn honked on the boulevard below. Inside the suite, a soft breeze stirred air redolent with the scent of white carnations and tall velvet blue irises.

“When this is over—” Doc snapped “—I just hope we
know
who the hell we are.”

 

Sometime later, Maggie studied the two figures on the settee as she waited for control to acknowledge her transmission.

Paige fidgeted a little, hunching shoulders still wrapped in Doc's coat against the cooling breeze. Her eyes were wide with excitement.

David didn't move. Not a muscle. Not an eyelash.

Maggie had worked with him on a number of missions in the past three years. She'd seen him up to his elbows in an Asian swamp and flat on his stomach, inching his way across a thin crust of ice that cracked ominously under his weight with every
movement. She'd watched him at the high-speed computer in the control center, his jaw tight and small beads of sweat rolling down the side of his brow as he pulled together a list of possible Irish terrorists just hours before visiting British royalty were scheduled to land in Washington, D.C.

But she'd never seen him as tightly coiled as he was now.

Claire's clear voice cut through the heavy silence at last.

“Cyrene here. I've got Thunder with me. Go ahead, Chameleon.”

Maggie smiled as she lifted the transceiver. She'd just won a bet with herself. She'd fully expected Adam Ridgeway to come up to the OMEGA control center once Claire had given him the startling news that Doc's fiancée needed immediate extraction. The director would make it his personal responsibility to ensure his agent's loved one was out of danger.

“The situation I briefed you on a few moments ago has changed a bit,” Maggie announced, with slight understatement.

“How so, Chameleon?”

“We won't need the transportation I requested for the subject. Not just yet, anyway.”

“Why not?” Adam asked sharply. “Is she all right?”

“She's fine. She's right here, with me and Doc. But she understands that she's been mistaken for me. She wants to make the contact in my place.” Flicking an apologetic glance at Doc, Maggie finished her transmission. “I think we should let her.”

For several long moments, Adam didn't respond. Maggie held her breath, not quite sure whether or not she wanted the director to approve this highly irregular request. What they were proposing was well outside OMEGA's operating parameters. As far as she knew, Adam had never allowed anyone other than fully cleared, well-trained agents to become involved in the organization's desperate and often deadly operations.

On the other hand, he had two of his best-trained operatives in the field with Paige right now. If anyone could keep her safe, and still pull off this dangerous charade, Maggie and Doc could. She hoped.

“Let me get this straight,” Adam said at last. “You want me
to authorize a civilian to impersonate a secret agent who's impersonating a call girl?”

“That's it,” Maggie confirmed.

“Does Doc concur with this?”

Maggie flicked a quick glance at David's rigid face. Strange she'd never quite appreciated the phrase
carved in granite
before. Without a word, she handed him the compact.

David sent his former and perhaps current fiancée a cold stare.

Paige started to shrink back into the cocoon of his wool jacket, but caught herself just in time. Squaring her shoulders, she returned his look.

His mouth compressed to a thin line, David lifted the compact. The gold case looked tiny and fragile in his big hands, but he operated the transmit button with a sure, competent touch.

“Doc here. I concur. With specific conditions.”

Maggie frowned. In the heated discussion that had preceded this transmission, David hadn't mentioned any conditions.

“The subject isn't to be out of our contact, not for a moment,” he stated with grim emphasis. “I want to know where she is every second. She'll need a tracking device implanted under her skin. Today.”

“I can have someone there in a few hours,” Adam replied slowly.

“Wait a minute!” Paige protested. “What tracking device? Implanted where under my skin?”

“Don't worry,” Maggie assured her. “It's just a small chip. So tiny, you won't even know it's there.”

“I won't know it's
where?
”

Ignoring their exchange, David continued laying out his conditions. “I'm altering my cover to provide her closer surveillance. I haven't worked out all the details yet. I'll get back to you as soon as I do.”

“Fine.”

The lines bracketing either side of his mouth deepened. “And I reserve the right to extract her without prior consultation. Anytime I deem it necessary.”

“Agreed.”

“Not by me!” Thoroughly indignant, Paige reached for the compact. “I want to talk to him.”

With obvious reluctance, David handed her the communications device. “Press the stone in the center of the lid once to transmit, twice to receive.”

She fumbled with the small gold case for a moment or two, then held the mirror up in front of her face.

“What did you call him?” she asked Maggie, peering over the lid. “Thunder?”

“Thunder,” Maggie confirmed. “It's his code name.”

The satellite transmissions were secure, and so scrambled they couldn't be interpreted even if they were intercepted. Still, none of the OMEGA agents ever took unnecessary chances.

Paige squeezed the small stone. “Mr. Thunder, this is…this is Jezebel.”

David grimaced in disgust.

After a pregnant pause, Adam replied. “Go ahead, Jezebel.”

“I just want to let you know I'm well aware of Dav—of Doc's concerns. I'll do whatever he and—?”

“Chameleon,” Maggie supplied.

“Whatever he and Chameleon say. Within reason. I want to check out this implant before anyone pokes it under my skin.”

“I can understand your reservations,” Thunder replied. “However, Doc has made the tracking device a condition of your involvement in this operation. If you don't agree to it, you'll be out of Cannes within twenty minutes.”

Whew!
Maggie had felt the whip of Adam's authority a few times herself in the past. It wasn't a particularly pleasant experience, even at a distance of some five thousand miles.

To her credit, Paige didn't wilt under the force of Adam's edict. The prospect of adventure, Maggie decided wryly, must have brought out some inner qualities that she suspected the younger woman hadn't displayed very often in the past.

Paige scowled at the compact, then at Doc, then at the compact again.

“Fine,” she said testily into the transmitter. “But the thing
had darn well better be removable. I don't want to walk around on an electronic leash for the rest of my life.”

Fumbling with the receive button, she didn't catch the hard glint that deepened David's eyes to a gunmetal gray.

Maggie did, however.

Something told her that Paige was going to find it a lot more difficult to shed her leash after her adventure than she imagined.

F
or Paige, the next few hours seemed like something right out of a spy novel.

David made no effort to hide his anger at her stubbornness, but as soon as Thunder confirmed the decision, he moved into action. Coolly directing Paige to slip into something more suitable for an intense training session, he sat down at the secretaire and pulled a sheet of the hotel's elegant stationery in front of him.

Chameleon, who had confided that her real name was Maggie, took Paige into the bedroom and dug out a pair of tan linen slacks and a sleeveless, backless silk top in a vivid jade.

“Come out as soon as you're changed. We've got a lot to do, and not much time to do it in. Our…your contact could call at any moment.”

Maggie paused, her hand on the door latch. “Are you sure about this, Paige? Or I suppose I'd better call you Meredith?”

Paige glanced over her shoulder into the sitting room. David's broad back was to her. She could see the play of his muscles under his starched cotton shirt as he wrote. The afternoon sun
light picked out the deep reddish tints in his brown hair. He seemed so achingly familiar to her, and yet suddenly such a stranger.

Her heart thumped with the knowledge that she was going to discover a side to him she'd never known before.

“Yes, I'm sure.”

When she emerged from the bedroom a few moments later, David held several neat handwritten lists.

“All right,” he said, “let's get to it.”

She'd known he was a skilled engineer and a born leader, of course. The several hundred electronics engineers and technicians who worked for him at the huge firm where they were both employed worshiped him. Personnel turnover in David's division was minimal, and output was well above that of any other department in terms of both quality and quantity. He'd rarely talked about his work when he and Paige were together, preferring instead to explore their similar preferences in old movies and spicy foods and biking through Cali-fornia's glorious national parks. But she'd heard enough cafeteria scuttlebutt and office gossip to know that when David set his mind and his energy to a problem, everyone considered it solved.

He now orchestrated Paige's transformation from technical librarian to high-class hooker with the same skill he brought to his job. And with a merciless, unrelenting thoroughness that almost overwhelmed her.

The first task was to teach her the emergency signals.

Taking into account her difficulty with figures, David and Maggie grilled Paige on each and every signal, over and over. By the time they were done, she was sure she'd be able to verify everything from “Agent in place” to “Situation desperate, request immediate backup” sixty or seventy years from now.

Then they instructed her in the use of the various implements Maggie laid out on the square, marble-topped coffee table. Paige fumbled a bit with the electronic “sweep” in the hairbrush handle, and gasped when a small but lethal projectile shot out of a tube of mascara and embedded itself in the opposite wall. On her second try with the mascara, she aimed for a thick folded
pad David had propped against a chairback and hit a rare Meissen figurine of a young girl on the mantel. While David picked up the shattered porcelain pieces, Maggie quietly tucked away the evil-looking gun she'd laid on the table, saying that Paige would be safer without anything more lethal than the mascara.

When a fussy little waiter knocked at the door to the suite an hour later, Paige, in her new role as Meredith, answered. But it was David who took charge when the waiter set the silver tea tray on a marble-topped table and extracted a set of surgical tools from the snowy linen napkin.

“Is this the chip?” David asked, holding up a clear cellophane package containing a paper-thin sliver of plastic no bigger than a newborn baby's thumbnail.

“Yes, Dr. Jensen,” the waiter confirmed in a clipped European accent Paige couldn't place. “It's been tested in labs both here and in the States, and several times in the field. It has not failed us. Not once.”

David sent the man a cold look. “It had better not fail now.”

“No,” he replied, blinking. “No, of course not.”

When the little waiter picked up what looked like a scalpel, Paige swallowed nervously. “Is this absolutely necessary? I mean, I'll have the compact with me, and you've said that one of you will be in visual contact at all times.”

The look David turned on her was almost as cold as the one he'd given the waiter. “It's not too late to get you out of here.”

Paige gulped. “Bring on the knife.”

Still, she couldn't help tensing as the waiter wiped the scalpel with an antiseptic gauze, then approached her.

“This won't hurt,
madame,
” he assured her. “I will deaden the area a bit. Just sit there, in that chair, and relax.”

“Easy for you to say,” Paige muttered as she perched on the edge of a side chair.

Her nervousness evidently communicated itself to the little waiter-surgeon. He hovered over her, frowning.

“
Madame,
you must relax. I make only the slightest of in
cisions, no more than the scratch of a pin. Just here, at the back of your neck, where your hair will cover it.”

He indicated the area with a swipe of the anesthetizing pad. Despite herself, Paige flinched.

With a small, savage curse, David strode to her side. Lifting her bodily out of the chair, he resettled her on his lap. Gratefully Paige turned her face into his shoulder. He brushed her hair to one side with a big, warm hand, then cradled the back of her head.

Closing her eyes, Paige buried her nose in his jacket. The distinctive blend of fine wool, woodsy after-shave and the subtle masculine scent that was David's alone filled her senses. She felt the strength of his arms around her, the solid security of the body pressed to hers.

What in the world was she doing? she wondered for a wild, tumultuous moment, burrowing deeper into his hold. How did she think she could play this dangerous game, when she trembled at the thought of a scalpel? Why didn't she just nest here, in David's arms, for the rest of her life?

Because she didn't want to nest, Paige reminded herself. Because she wanted to…to soar with the eagles. Or at least with David. To share whatever danger and excitement and…

“So,
madame,
it is done.”

“What?” Paige turned her head sideways and opened one eye to peer up at the little man standing beside her.

“It is done.”

“It is?”

Cautiously she lifted her nose from David's shoulder. His arms tightened around her for a fraction of a second, as though he were reluctant to let her go.

When he eased his hold, Paige tried to convince herself she didn't miss the security of his arms. She moved her head a few careful degrees in both directions, but didn't feel a thing.

“This is the receiver,” the waiter-surgeon said, holding out a small, flat rectangle that looked much like a miniature calculator with a liquid crystal digital display. “Using the signals from the
chip, it will pinpoint the subject's exact location, either in global coordinates or in radial meters from a specific center.”

“I'll take that.” David slipped the small device into his suit pocket.

Paige watched it disappear with an odd sensation. She might have lost her emerald ring, but she was now bound to David by a stronger, far more intimate link. One she couldn't take off if she wanted to.

The thought unsettled her. And reassured her. And confused her.

 

Once the odd little waiter departed, the pace became frantic. Maggie and David worked through each item on his list to complete Paige's transformation.

A summation of Meredith Ames's leisurely, pampered lifestyle. Check.

A rundown of the wealthy, elite clients she catered to. Check.

A brief description of the technology she'd carried from L.A. and how she'd carried it. Check.

A precise step-by-step plan for Paige to hand over the microdot, then disappear from the scene. Check.

And in the event the unknown contact didn't surface within the next few hours, a detailed schedule for the rest of Meredith's day and night. Check.

Paige stared at the schedule. “The casino? I'm supposed to go to the casino?”

“It's part of Meredith's normal routine when she's in Cannes,” Maggie explained.

“Does she gamble?”

“Occasionally.”

“You won't, however,” David interjected, his face softening for the first time in what seemed like hours. “You'd probably put down a five-thousand-dollar chip, thinking it was five.”

“Probably,” Paige agreed, more relieved by that almost-smile than she'd allow herself to admit. “So what do I do at the casino, if I don't gamble?”

Maggie gave her a wry grin. “You advertise. You're a busi
nesswoman, remember? In addition to acting as a mule for smuggled technology, you have a product to sell. One that commands rather incredible prices here in Cannes.”

“Oh. Yes.”

Ignoring David's sudden frown, Maggie rose to her feet. “Come on, Meredith. It's time we went to work on packaging your product.”

David rose also, only to be stopped in his tracks when both women murmured protests.

“We can handle this part,” Maggie assured him. “We don't need one of your lists for this.”

His gaze rested on Paige's face for a moment. “I have a pretty good feel for what she looks best in.”

“Doc,” Maggie replied gently, “what you think Paige looks best in and what Meredith Ames looks best in might be two entirely different bests.”

 

Closing the door to the huge, luxuriously appointed bedroom, the two women went to work adapting Maggie/Meredith's working wardrobe for Paige/Meredith's more slender frame.

Digging through the drawers of a high chest-on-chest, Maggie pulled out a stunning silver belt, Italian leather sandals, and a jaunty emerald green rhinestoned ball cap. They would add Meredith's distinctive touch to the linen slacks and green top Paige was now wearing, she explained. Just in case the contact called and she had to go out immediately.

That done, Maggie threw open the doors to a magnificent walnut armoire that must have once belonged to French royalty. Paige's mouth sagged at the array of silks and satins, seductive teddies and whisper-thin negligees, see-through organza blouses and stiff-boned bodices displayed within.

“The Grand Casino is one of the most exclusive men's clubs in the world,” Maggie told her as she flipped through the padded hangers. “It's patronized by movie stars and oil sheiks and billionaires who like their play deep, their cigars hand-rolled, and their women elegant. Here, try this little number.”

Dubiously Paige eyed the two-piece ball gown she held out.
While the full, floor-length black taffeta skirt was demure enough, the bustier that went with it was something else again. An eye-catching, glowing fuchsia in color, the strapless bodice was trimmed with black satin ribbon along its heart-shaped upper edge and the deep V of the lower edge. More ribbon traced the stiff boning that ribbed its front and covered the front closure, which hooked together like an old-fashioned corset.

Paige slipped on the skirt, then struggled with the hooks of the constricting bodice. As she tugged it into place, she discovered that it was fitted with padded lifts that pushed her breasts up to create a dramatic cleavage. Far more cleavage than she'd ever dreamed she possessed.

Maggie handed her a black velvet ribbon with a heart-shaped diamond pendant. “Here, this is perfect with that outfit.”

Paige tied the thin ribbon around her throat, then stared at her image in the floor-to-ceiling dressing room mirror.

“Now
that's
what I'd call superior product packaging,” Maggie said with a grin.

Paige nodded, ashamed to admit that she wasn't sure she'd have the nerve to go out of the bedroom, much less to a crowded casino, in this decadent, delicious, totally erotic gown.

Yet, she would, she told herself fiercely. It was time a certain broad-shouldered, overprotective engineer learned that there was more to her than long bike rides through the California parks and lazy Sunday mornings sharing the paper. There was excitement. Romance. Mystery. Adventure.

She gave the bustier a last, uncertain look, then changed back into the tan slacks.

Laying the eveningwear on the bed, Maggie smiled as she trailed a fingertip along black satin piping. “This was one assignment I was planning to enjoy.”

Paige glanced up from working the buttons on the green blouse. “Do you go out on assignment often?”

“Often enough.”

“Always with David?” Despite her best efforts, she couldn't keep a faint trace of jealousy out of her voice.

“Not always.” Maggie gave Paige a bland look. “But regularly enough to know what kind of man he is.”

Paige fought a little dart of resentment. The other woman certainly didn't make any bones about her intimate knowledge of someone else's fiancé. Former fiancé.

“And what kind of man is he?” she asked, a trifle coolly.

“The best,” Maggie replied bluntly.

Paige's resentment melted, and she gave a small sigh. “I know.”

Maggie nibbled on her lower lip for a moment, as if wanting to say something. But a glance at the ornate little clock on the dresser evidently made her decide not to share any further details about the man they both appeared to appreciate, if in vastly different ways.

“I'd better get out of here,” she said, tossing a few items into a small overnight case. “I'm moving into the suite across the hall with Doc.”

Busy with her packing, she didn't see Paige's shoulders stiffen.

“We've got a surveillance camera rigged that sweeps the hallway every few seconds. No one can get in or out of this suite without our knowledge.”