Dare Me (8 page)

“What are our options?” she asked, her voice surprisingly
crisp.

“We don’t know if the terrorists really have the launch code
or if they’re just trying to get attention,” Abe said.  “So we still have some
time.  But not much.”

“Then I suggest we double our efforts to find Bogdanov’s
failsafe,” Dante answered.

“I’ve sent extra specialists to every location you initially
identified,” Abe said to Macy.  “But your friend here and I both agree that
this house would have been the most likely place for the code to be hidden.”  Abe
reached out and pressed his large hand on Macy’s shoulder, which she suddenly
imagined had grown very unsteady.  “The operation between T-45 and the Arm just
became official.  We have to find the code or millions of people could die.”

“All the books have been searched,” Dante reported, tearing
off his jacket and slinging it over the back of a chair.  Time had run out. 
Once again, he’d been forced to choose the good of the mission over a future
with Macy.

But this time, he’d find a way to control the outcome.

He had to.

Macy stepped to the center of the library, her gaze high as
she turned around in a tight series of circles, her eyes lowering at every
pass.  Like a machine programmed to accurately assess the inner workings of
some electronic device, Macy focused her finder’s instincts on the library with
cool precision.

After consulting with Marshall, they’d decided against
bringing in more agents.  The Arm had already completed thorough and
by-the-book searches.  Only someone like Macy, an expert in pushing beyond the
limits of protocol and procedure and who had studied Bogdanov’s life would be
able to find the counter-code in time to avert a disaster.

She had, however, agreed to accept Dante’s help, just as
he’d agreed to allow a squad of T-45 operatives who’d trained in the Himalayas
to join the Arm special ops team in their quest to stop the terrorists at the
source.  The cooperative nature of this mission would have made history, if
either agency ever allowed the pairing to go public, which they would not.  T-45
subsisted on their reputation as a rogue operation.  As soon as the mission was
complete, all proof that they’d ever worked alongside the Arm would be erased.

Except for his work with Macy.  He’d move heaven and earth
to make sure their reunion was not forgotten.

“Not having to go through the books will save time,” Macy
said.  “Besides, Bogdanov didn’t read any of these books,” she said.  “They’re
all in English.  They likely belonged to his wife.”

“None in Russian?”

The library easily housed over a thousand books.  Surely a
man with Bogdanov’s national pride would have a few native novels on his
shelves, even if just an original copy of
War and Peace.

“Bogdanov was proficient in French, German and Latin, but
while he could speak well enough, reading English was beyond him.”

Dante had read the reports, but such esoteric details tended
not to stick.  He’d concentrated on the bottom line assessment that the code
was nowhere to be found.

“Couldn’t he have hidden code in an English text, to throw
off anyone who might be looking?”

She paced the room while she snapped on her special nylon
gloves.  “Perhaps, but I don’t think so.  Your agents checked the books for
signs of handling, and most of them hadn’t been touched in decades—as if they
were simply put here for show.”

“So we ignore the books.”

“For now.  The books are almost too obvious.  Besides, I
think Bogdanov would keep the code somewhere he could see it.  Everyday,
possibly.”

“How did you draw that conclusion?”

Macy’s attention focused on a painting, an original by a Dutch
master of an austere, upper class couple.  She answered without taking her eyes
off the portrait.  “When Gorbachev knocked down the Berlin wall and communism
started to fail, Bogdanov feared that some mad countryman would launch an
attack against the United States.  He created the counter-code so that he
personally could stop the destruction.  He wanted to save his beloved country
from starting World War Three.  That’s why he hid the code here in the United
States rather than in the Soviet Union.  This property belonged to his American
wife and has been in her family for years.”

This much, he knew.  “Her murder was no accident.  If we
hadn’t removed the housekeeper, she would have been next.”

Macy pursed her lips, but didn’t speak, smudging her red
lipstick while she ran her fingers up and down the picture frame.  Dante knew
he shouldn’t be noticing her lips, but he couldn’t help himself.  When he’d
walked into the billiards room earlier with Marshall on his heels, he’d had an
instant to recognize what would have happened next if world safety hadn’t
interfered.

The way she’d dressed, the way she’d moved—he’d been two
seconds away from living out his fantasy.  She’d intended to seduce him and no
matter his intention to draw out his teasing one more night, she would have
succeeded in changing his mind.  Last night, when he locked her in the room,
he’d expended the last of his control.  With blood rushing to his cock and his
brain starving for nutrition, he’d barely put her off for one more evening.

His time had run out.  She wanted him.  And if not for this
ominous change in the course of their operation, she would have had him, likely
right on the billiards table.

Macy moved to a curio case filled with knick-knacks all
related to tobacco and smoking.  A collection of antique pipes.  A snuffbox.  A
cigar cutter inlaid with genuine mother-of-pearl.

“Bogdanov played chess.  His hobbies included puzzles,
mainly those in three dimensions,” she answered.  “I suspect he hid the code by
creating a pattern of objects.”  She marched to the desk, lifting an ink
blotter first, then the pen set, then a tarnished silver vase.  “And he’d keep
it out in the open.”

“Hidden in plain sight?” he guessed.

“Yes.  Visual connection to the counter-code would have
given him comfort.  He was a worrier.  He often wrote his formulas, even the
ones he’d memorized, on large sheets of paper and hung them in his laboratory. 
That’s why I started my search with the kitchen.  He loved to cook and spent
many hours there.”

Dante crossed his arms, fighting the knowledge that his
presence was completely unnecessary.  Before they’d begun, she’d assured him
that talking through the dilemma might bring some clue to light that would
help, but he wondered if taking the time to talk out loud wasn’t slowing her
down.

“So you’re searching the rooms in the order of how much time
he spent there?”

“With the exception of the billiards room, yes.  I tried
that room on a hunch.  You can’t imagine how ticked I am that it didn’t pan
out.”

For a split second, Dante didn’t register her full meaning. 
When he did, he couldn’t contain an ironic chuckle.

“I guess some things aren’t meant to work out the way we
planned.”

She spun and surprised him with a quirked grin.  “The best
things never do.”

* * *

Macy stormed out of the library, stalked into the parlor and
because she knew she’d already thoroughly searched the room top to bottom,
kicked a small ottoman across the room.  She screamed in impotent frustration,
dragging her hands through her hair and toyed with the idea of pulling the
strands free so that her head might stop pounding.

They’d searched through the night and come up with nothing. 
Zero.  Zip.  The code had to be here.  It had to be.

“The code isn’t here,” Dante announced.

He’d left her ten minutes ago to take an urgent call from
Abe.  When she realized her boss wasn’t asking to speak to her, her frustration
escalated.  Now, not only was she a failure, she was a third wheel.

“You don’t know that.”

“Abe says the team in Minsk found the counter-code.”

“Minsk?” she asked, the pitch of her voice stabbing into her
brain like an ice-pick.  “That’s impossible.  By all measures of probability,
that’s the least likely place Bogdanov would have hidden the code.”

Dante shrugged.  “But he did.  The team you sent there is sure
of it.”

She shook her head.  Because of the low chance that the
scientist would entrust the code to a place in his dissolving home country, Macy
had sent the greenest agents to Russia.  Yes, she’d made sure a more seasoned
analyst led the team, but even the leader lacked Macy’s talent and experience.

“I need to see the proof.”

“Abe says the secure network in Russia has been
compromised.  Something to do with the power grid.  They’re resetting the
system.  The information will be here in twenty minutes, thirty at the latest.”

Macy didn’t hold back, but screamed in unbridled
frustration.  Protocol demanded that the team set up fail safes to avoid this
kind of delay.  Her team had screwed up. 
Her
team.  Even if they had
found the code, when they regrouped in Paris, heads were going to roll.

Beginning with hers.

Dante approached her with caution, but her nerve endings
registered every inch of his progress with spikes in her body temperature.  Her
anger, frustration and fear collided with the lust she’d only barely contained
once she’d decided to turn the tables and seduce Dante before he succeeded in
seducing her.

Now, if the impending disaster was truly thwarted—or if the team
was wrong and the world was still at risk of descending into chaos—didn’t she
want one last glorious memory to pull her through the darkness?

A vivid, fresh, intense memory of Dante making love to her?

When he cupped his hand gently on her shoulder, she harnessed
her fears, regrets, reservations and rage and launched herself against him. 
She captured his mouth with hers and locked her hands against his cheeks.  He
had no means of escape.

And neither did she.

He didn’t deny her.  They inhaled each other, tongues
mating, until neither of them could breathe.

He swung them out of the parlor.  With half a coherent thought,
Macy figured he meant to take her upstairs.  To the master suite?  She didn’t
care where they made love, so long as the event happened in the next few
minutes.  Her flesh flamed and with one quick tug, she divested herself of her
zippered blouse and then tore at Dante’s shirt until the buttons pinged along the
hardwood floor.  Seconds later, her bra flew into the air, hooking onto the
banister.

Macy locked her legs around Dante’s waist, pressing her sex
against his hard erection until a liquid agony filled her.  She pulled herself
high, gasping when his mouth locked around her nipple and suckled her to near
delirium.  They’d both wanted this for too long to deny their intrinsic lust
any longer.

Shockingly, Dante stumbled beneath their combined weight on
about the third step.  With a laughing shout, they ended up splayed on the
stairs.  His pants disappeared first, then hers, along with shoes and boxers
and panties.  Dante turned, bracing his back against the stairs as Macy climbed
over his lap and guided his sex into hers.

The slick sensation spawned renewed fire—white hot and
impossible to escape.  Macy braced her arms on his knees behind her, arching
her back so he could bathe her breasts in desperate kisses.  When she thought
she’d go insane from his plucking her nipples with his teeth, she returned the
favor, yanking his hair into her hands and tugging him close so that no space
existed between his lips and hers.

The pace intensified.  He grabbed her hips and urged her to
take whatever bliss she needed—so she did.  His sex thickened inside her, and
his hands and lips took greedy license, touching and tasting until she was
caught up in a storm of sensations.  By the time she’d neared the edge of her
climax, Dante pushed her over fast with the guttural glory that was his
release.

Moments passed.  Sanity returned.  When her chest stopped
heaving, Macy realized that more than anything in the world, she wanted to stay
right where she was, curled over Dante’s lap, connected to him physically,
breathing hard while he stroked her hair.  He whispered something into her ear
that she couldn’t understand, which was fine with her, because she didn’t want
to hear.  Words had the power to destroy this tentative truce.

Words, and the fact that they were on the staircase, which
while exciting at the moment, was not exactly comfortable.  She rolled off of
him, but unashamed and with no regret, she snuggled beside him and stared up at
the ceiling.

Only there wasn’t a ceiling there exactly—it was covered by
a long, artfully cut mirror.

She blinked.  How odd.

“Macy, I want to tell you about the Chilean operation.”

Dante caught her attention and she dragged her gaze away from
the mirror.  For a second, she wondered just how hot Dante had gotten being able
to watch her on top of him, but his eyes reflected a seriousness she’d once
easily trusted.

Past hurts aside, she needed to hear his explanation. 
Before they parted ways again, she needed to hear how he would justify the
breach of her trust that had ruined their relationship—and her career within
the Arm.

“Why did you pass my intelligence work off as your own?” she
asked.

“Because Russell didn’t trust you.”

His lie slapped her in the face.  “Russell?  He recruited
me!”

Dante frowned.  “He was also hot for you, but you made the
mistake of falling into bed with me.”

Macy didn’t want to believe that her mentor had mistrusted
her, but she couldn’t discount Dante’s theory, either.  Russell Rhodes had
brought her into covert ops after she’d served in the CIA for less than a
year.  He’d trained her himself, arranging for her to shadow him on missions
where she was the youngest agent by ten years or more.

He’d never made a move on her, but that didn’t mean he
hadn’t been interested.  Learning to ignore flirting had gotten her through her
teen years, when the house had been full of her brothers’ many friends and most
of them, older and younger, had tried to make a play for her.  The same had
held true during college when she’d studied advanced mathematics and then in
the CIA.  Thrown into situation after situation where men outnumbered the women
ten to one, she’d become immune to subtle attempts at seduction.  A guy had to
practically hit her over the head to show her that his interest was sincere.