Desperado (16 page)

The man moved close to the window and aimed the light in again, as if he suspected something. Cord plastered himself against the wall and waited, praying that Maggie wouldn’t choose right now to open that kitchen door. If she did, the light would reflect the movement, and they’d be in a shooting battle with nothing accomplished.

His heart raced and his tall body tensed. He took the safety off the pistol and delved into a special pouch on the bottom of his holster for the silencer he always carried. If worst came to worst, he’d drop the man right through the window. If he came into the room, it would be quieter. Either way, he couldn’t risk discovery, not when he was this close to bringing down Gruber’s evil empire.

Back in the duct, Maggie was making quick decisions. She closed her eyes and worked to remember the map Cord had
shown her. Her hands trembled as she fought fear and confusion. Then she remembered. The corridor split, but the kitchen door was to her immediate left. That meant the duct on her left was the correct one!

She slid to it and began carefully to push at one corner of the metal while catching the grate firmly with her free hand to prevent it from falling and alerting someone.

It was new, fortunately, so it gave easily, loosening itself from its hinges obligingly. She caught it with both hands and gingerly drew it up into the duct with her, placing it carefully to the side but with an edge easily reachable from someone below in case it had to be placed back after they were through.

Heart pounding, blood racing, she caught the edges of the opening and slowly, carefully, lowered herself from it. It was about a three-foot drop to the linoleum floor, but she did it as lightly as a cat. She stopped, waiting, listening for sounds. She didn’t hear anything, except for a faint noise from the kitchen. Surely that was Cord.

She padded quickly to the kitchen door and worked the bolt quietly, drawing it back until the door was easily opened.

But just as she started to turn the doorknob, she felt something, a flash of intuition, almost as if someone had called her name quickly, in warning. She frowned, wondering if she were being fanciful. But she hesitated.

In the kitchen, Cord had both hands on the butt of the .45 and had tensed to turn and throw a shot out the window the second it became necessary. The guard was standing there,
fixed securely in place, talking to someone on a mobile phone. His voice was too muffled to understand, but Cord feared discovery.

Shooting the guard was going to solve nothing if he’d relayed the news of their presence to a third party. He cursed under his breath, furious at the unexpected complication.

And there was now a worse one. He caught a movement out of the corner of his eye and turned his head in time to see, just for an instant, the turning of the doorknob that led out of the kitchen into the rest of the house.

He ground his lips together. If Maggie walked into the room, she would be shot immediately by the guard, who was standing just outside the window. He had to save her, at whatever cost. If only he could warn her to stay where she was, not to proceed…!

At the window, the guard hesitated, spoke into the phone once again, made a short reply, and suddenly the light was gone. Bushes outside made a crackling sound as the man retreated to the pavement with lazy steps and looked around the driveway with the flashlight before continuing on his way.

Cord almost shivered as he relaxed his tense muscles. And at that moment, the doorknob slowly turned again and a pale face peered around it cautiously.

Cord rushed to her, opening and closing the door quickly behind him as he went into the next room with her. He crushed her into his body and kissed her hungrily. They’d had a close call, and she didn’t know. He didn’t want her to know.

He nodded toward the door ahead of them and deployed her just behind him.

They moved slowly into the hall. From the schematic, Cord knew that Gruber’s office was upstairs, and protected by various electronic alarms, including infrared. But he had that angle covered. The wooden doors that locked front and back were only window dressing. It was the two inside steel doors, one blocking the entrance to the hall in front, and the other in the kitchen, in the rear, that were Gruber’s real protection. Gruber was certain they were impregnable, and they were—but he’d overlooked the air-conditioning ducts.

Footsteps alerted Cord a second time when they were going up the stairs. He pressed Maggie back against the wall beside him and they waited until the steps died away down the upstairs hall, in the opposite direction from the office.

Cord moved forward again, like lightning this time, and straight down the hall to Gruber’s office. He whipped out a small case, had Maggie hold a penlight for him, and set to work. Barely a minute later, they were inside the door and it was closed behind them.

Cord knew that the room was certainly bugged, and booby-trapped. He positioned Maggie by the door and signaled her to stand there and listen for visitors. He took out a small device and watched it reveal a crisscross of laser beams sweeping the floor. He moved cautiously past them, avoiding a last one that swung neck-high, and went to the big safe behind Gruber’s sweeping oak desk and went to work.

Every sound was magnified. Maggie chewed on a fingernail, absently wondering if Cord still had her shoes. Her feet felt good on the bare floor, but it was going to be difficult to explain bare feet in the restaurant. But there were other concerns just now. She checked her watch and groaned. They had barely ten minutes to finish and get back to the restaurant before the food was served, if they didn’t want to arouse suspicion. How could they possibly break into a safe and get out without discovery and get back in that short length of time?

Her heartbeat intensified. She watched Cord’s quick, deft movements with terror. This was the real thing, she realized. This was what covert operations was all about—stealth and danger. Discovery was behind every heartbeat, death at the trail of every drop of sweat. One wrong move, one accidental sound, and it was all over. She thought of how many times Cord must have done this very thing in his career, first in law enforcement, and then in mercenary work, and she paled.

She wasn’t a coward, but the waiting was unbearable. She knew that her muscles were going to start convulsing any second from being held so tight.

Then, all at once, the safe door swung open gently and Cord was inside, with his penlight, going through sections as if he had all the time in the world. She wanted to go and see what he was doing, but she kept her ear to the door and listened. Far down the hall were footsteps. Slowly, she realized that they were coming closer!

She couldn’t tell what Cord was doing. He didn’t seem to be taking anything out of the safe. He worked quickly and then suddenly closed the safe, just as heavy footsteps came closer down the hall, and sounded as if they were going to make it right to this door! What if it was the guard, and he had a key?

Cord glanced at her, and she motioned furiously toward the door. He nodded, eased cautiously but quickly back through the laser beam pattern to her side, and drew her with him behind the thick drapes that fell to the floor. He held her hand tightly in one of his, while the .45 was now held, with the safety off, against his chest.

There was a loud noise, as if of a key going into a lock. Suddenly the door opened and the light went on. Maggie had steeled herself not to react, not to move, not to breathe. Beside her, she could feel Cord’s tall body still and tensed. Neither of them breathed.

Seconds later, the light went off, the door closed, and the key went into the lock again. There was a whine, as if electronic devices were being reset. Then the footsteps died away.

Cord laughed softly at her ear, but he didn’t speak. He drew her from behind the curtains, handed her the pistol, with the safety on, and listened at the door. The footsteps had droned away and ended.

He went to work again, and seconds later, they were in the hall. He reset the security switches again, eased down the hall with Maggie at his back, listened, and then worked down the
steps with her, avoiding one particular one—the same one he’d avoided on the way up. She’d have to remember to ask why.

He led her back into the room adjoining the steel door of the kitchen, put her up into the air duct, removed the chair and waited until she replaced the grate and was moving toward the kitchen. Then he moved to the steel door, positioned the bolt, went through it and heard it slide satisfyingly into place. He tried the door, relieved to find that the bolt was secure.

Maggie appeared in the kitchen duct. He reached up to help her down before he replaced the duct cover and moved her to the door with him. He checked his watch. The guard was due to make the rounds again in three minutes. It would be close.

He interrupted the electric current, put Maggie out onto the stoop and followed her, reinitiated the current flow and reentered the security codes. Then he grabbed her arm and said, “Run!”

They dashed across the driveway, into the bushes, through them, and sprinted down the street. Behind them, they heard no following footsteps, no alarms.

Breathless, they didn’t stop until they reached the courtyard of the hotel. Cord was laughing.

Maggie shook him. “That was terrifying!” she squeaked. “How can you do that day after day…?”

He caught her up in his arms and kissed her so fiercely that he bruised her mouth. She held on for dear life, aroused, hungry for him. The danger had been the catalyst. She wanted him…!

While she was feeling it, she was saying it. He eased them into the little shed where they’d left their clothing and closed the door, shooting the bolt home to shut them in, away from the world. Oblivious to time, danger, threat, he backed her against a cold, stone wall, jerked fabric out of the way and put his mouth hard over hers while he went into her with an economy of motion that left her gasping.

His mouth opened and bit at hers while the rhythm curled her hips up into his with heated abandon.

“Don’t cry out,” he cautioned, his voice clipped and husky with passion. He pinned her there with the weight of his body, the rasping of silk and the quick rush of their breathing the only sound in the confined little space. His body thrust into hers fiercely, his mouth hard, insistent, on her parted lips as he felt the spiral of pleasure build like gas-ignited flames.

“Harder,” she groaned into his mouth, her voice breaking. “Oh…Cord…do it…hard!”

Her body opened to him, incited him. She could hardly believe she was the same inhibited woman of only a month ago. Her nails bit into his shoulders as she lifted into the hard curve of him, her mouth searching feverishly for his as she pushed up to meet the violent thrusts. He was potent, so potent, and she felt him inside her body, filling it, expanding it until she thought she might burst open…!

She groaned piteously into his mouth and clung with her legs as well as her arms as the waves of fulfillment caught her up and convulsed her in his powerful hold. She felt his fin
gertips biting into her flesh as he crushed her hips under his in one long, exquisite straining together that brought a sound very like a harsh sob from the mouth possessing hers. He shivered with the aching, hot pleasure that riveted his body to hers.

She shivered with him, drowning in the exquisite heat of joy that was so new and so exciting. She felt him deep in her body, throbbing, sated, helpless to withdraw. She laughed secretly and pressed her open mouth to his throat.

He moved against her involuntarily, prolonging the stabs of delight, until he was able to get his breath again.

“No,” she protested huskily when he began to withdraw.

He kissed her hungrily, but he didn’t obey. “I don’t want to stop, either. But we have to get back to the table, or we’re going to arouse suspicion,” he said unsteadily, kissing her one last time.

“I don’t want rice and mutton, I want dessert again,” she moaned.

He chuckled weakly. “And I thought you were inhibited,” he drawled.

“Not with you. It’s the danger, isn’t it?” she whispered. “It’s an aphrodisiac…have you done this with other women after a mission?” she demanded jealously.

“In a potting shed behind a hotel with armed men all around?” he exclaimed while he did up fastenings again. “With any other woman but you? Are you nuts? Here,” he added, handing her a tiny package of antibacterial tissue. “It
won’t do for an old man and a young woman to come back in smelling suspiciously,” he added with a grin that grew even more wicked when she gasped.

She adjusted her own clothing and put her dress back on. But her feet were still bare. “Cord, my shoes…!”

He pulled them out of his pockets and handed them to her. He also produced a small brush, and smiled while she put her hair back into order.

“There,” he murmured, studying her. “You’ll do.” He put his white wig back in place, reacquired his stoop and his cane, and opened the door.

“But, the safe…you didn’t take anything out of it,” she protested, suddenly remembering his bare hands.

“Didn’t I?” he asked, but he smiled and didn’t say another word as he escorted her slowly back into the restaurant.

The waiter was just bringing the mutton as “Jorge” seated Maggie at the table.

“Just in time,” Cord said in his thready adopted tone. “And I have worked up an enormous appetite in the garden!”

To Maggie’s credit, she didn’t blush or gasp, but she couldn’t quite stop smiling.

T
he return to Ahmed’s house was almost anticlimactic, after the exciting evening Cord and Maggie had shared. She looked back on it with wonder. She’d passed her first test of fire, and come through it relatively unscathed. She didn’t have to ask if Cord was proud of her. The answer was in his eyes.

She was a little uneasy about their passionate encounter in the shed. It had been a spur-of-the-moment thing, and very satisfying, but it disturbed her that she had so little control over her passions. Was that normal? she wondered. She had no way of knowing. Cord looked at her in a different way now, with possession and pride. It made her heart sing. If only she could stop time, she thought, and keep him from ever knowing about the past that haunted her. If only this tiny space of days could be insulated, packed carefully into a box and held, cherished, forever!

“We must leave in the morning on the ferry,” “Jorge” announced when they were inside Ahmed’s elegant living room. “I am sorry, but I worry to leave Cord alone, in his condition.”

“I quite understand,” Ahmed agreed with a sigh. “But it has been a delight to have you here, and to meet Maggie.” He lifted her hand and kissed her fingers gently. “You are exceptional,
mademoiselle,
” he added, and with hidden meaning that didn’t escape Maggie, or Cord.

“It has been a great pleasure to see something of your city,” Maggie said. “I hope to come back again one day.”

“You will always be welcome,” Ahmed said. “And, of course, so will you, Cousin Jorge.”

Cord only grinned.

The ferry was supposed to leave at 8:00 a.m. But, as on the trip over, it left at the whim of the operator. It might be nine, it might be ten, and people lined up in their cars, talking and reading and listening to music while they waited. In this part of the world, Maggie noted, hardly anybody rushed.

Her hands gripped the steering wheel hard.

“You must relax,
niña,
” “Jorge” said, nodding toward the dash and making a sign that it was bugged.

She groaned out loud. Would they never be free of surveillance? She could understand that Gruber would be having them watched. But they’d successfully penetrated his defenses the night before. What they’d accomplished was still a mystery
to her, but Cord seemed satisfied. She wondered what he’d learned, and was frustrated that she couldn’t talk normally.

“It’s so frustrating!” she exclaimed, and she didn’t mean the wait for the ferry.

“Jorge” threw up a careless hand and grinned at Rodrigo and Bojo, who were sitting unperturbed in the backseat, listening to a Spanish radio broadcast. “It is so natural,” he chuckled in his disguised voice. “Be patient. It will not be so much longer. Then we can tell Cord about our exciting visit with Ahmed. He is a good man.
Simpatico,
no?”

“Sí,”
she replied without thinking.

“I forget! You speak my language!”

She grinned at him. “Yes, I do, don’t I?” she teased.

Suddenly there was movement ahead, and she began to relax.

“Did I not tell you? And here we go!” “Jorge” said contentedly.

They crossed on the ferry to Gibraltar again and then on into Spain with appropriate formalities, such as showing their passports and letting the authorities look in the car to make sure they weren’t bringing in anything illegal. It was time-consuming, but Maggie didn’t really mind. She felt safer and safer, especially when they were on the road back to Jorge’s
finca
and she could drive, relaxed. Well, almost relaxed, she amended, glaring at the dashboard.

When they parked the car, Cord, Bojo and Rodrigo jumped out. Cord immediately motioned to Bojo and pointed to the
dash. Bojo nodded, taking a small packet of tools out of his djellaba. Cord said something to Rodrigo in such rapid-fire Spanish that Maggie couldn’t easily translate it. Rodrigo went straight to the barn, where the other men were waiting.

Cord and Maggie went into the house, where Jorge was waiting, pacing.

“Did it go well?” Jorge asked, noting that they were suspiciously silent. He laughed. “It is safe to talk. Your men have gone over the house with, how do you say, a fine-tooth comb. There are no surveillance devices here now!”

“Thank God!” Maggie exclaimed huskily. “I’m so tired of spying eyes! I’ll never feel comfortable again when I think I’m alone!”

“Now you know how it feels, don’t you?” Cord chuckled. He pulled off the white wig and became serious again. “We’re flying to Amsterdam this afternoon,” he told Jorge. “Rodrigo’s going to drive us up to the airport in Málaga, and we’re going from there.”

“In disguise?” Jorge murmured.

“No. Well, in a way,” Cord replied, smiling. “I’ll wear my dark glasses and let Maggie lead me.
That
disguise. Thanks for the loan of your identity.”

“Did you find the evidence?” Jorge asked.

“Yes,” Cord replied. But that was all he said.

Maggie sat up with the men after supper, but only for a little while. She took a leisurely bath in the elaborately tiled sunken
tub and enjoyed the luxury of being submerged in water while the jets shot water against her tired muscles. She was sore from the activity of the night before, not having done as much running and climbing in recent months.

The bathroom door opened and closed. She opened her eyes and watched Cord drop the towel around his waist before he climbed into the tub with her.

“Jorge,” she began in a thin little protest.

“Is a man, as we discussed once before,” he chuckled huskily as he levered down over her and found her mouth hungrily with his.

She moaned and reached up to him, electrified by the contact with his warm, rough skin against every inch of hers. But very soon the water began to splash out of the tub and onto the floor.

With a groan, Cord got out of the sunken tub and reached down to lift Maggie, but the brush of her body against him was too much for his self-control. He dragged towels down onto the wet tile and eased her down on top of them. Seconds later, his body was crushing hers into them.

The rushing of the jets barely touched her ears as they lay on the tiled floor in a tangle of wet towels and urgent movement.

She arched up to the hard, hungry thrust of his body, watching him watch her as they made love. It was more urgent each time, more passionate, more satisfying. She loved his eyes
on her while he satisfied her. She loved the muscular thrust of him above her, the ragged sound of his breathing, the fierce darkness in his eyes as he took her.

“I can’t…get enough,” he whispered roughly.

“Neither can I.” She arched her torso to coax his mouth down to her hard-tipped breasts. She watched him suckle them while he moved on her, and she gasped with growing delight.

His hand was at her hip, clenching. “I’m sorry,” he bit off. “I can’t hold it…”

Her legs curled over his tense thighs. “Don’t even try, darling,” she whispered into his insistent mouth.

The endearment kindled a climax that stiffened him convulsively. She felt his body jerk rhythmically while his mouth groaned into hers.

It was wonderful to feel him throb, to know that he took such pleasure from her. She lifted to lengthen the tremors and suddenly felt her body explode from the movement. She cried out under his mouth, frightened of the surge of pleasure that exceeded anything she’d felt with him before.

His head lifted. Even in the silvery aftermath of his own climax, he could feel hers. He moved, watching her reactions, measuring his strokes to give her the ultimate pleasure he could offer. She was frightened of it, he could see it in her wild eyes, her trembling body.

He only smiled, because he understood. It was difficult to give up so much control to another human being. But she could learn, as he had, to trust.

“You won’t die,” he whispered, as he moved even deeper. “But you may think you have…”

The words faded into frantic, desperate movement as she clenched her teeth and strained up toward him with her last whisper of strength…

It was like a dark, sweet convulsion, she thought as fulfillment washed over her like a throbbing, suffocating tidal wave of pleasure. She was blind, deaf, dumb, to everything except the release of tension. Her body was in a painful arch, her eyes on his blurred face as she gave herself to the darkness….

There were tender, breathlessly soft kisses on her closed eyelids, her panting mouth. She felt hard lips moving over every part of her while she lay throbbing, throbbing, throbbing from the hot, drugged pleasure he’d given her.

He chuckled. “You make me feel like the best lover who ever lived,” he whispered.

“You are.”

He nibbled her ear. “No. You just react to me as if I were. It isn’t the physical bond at all, Maggie, it’s the emotion that produces the pleasure.”

“You mean, because I love you,” she whispered back.

There was a faint hesitation in the lips worshiping her relaxed body. “I mean, because I love you, as well.”

She was going crazy. She knew it. Her hands, that had been gripping his buttocks so tightly, relaxed.

“Didn’t you know, honey?” he asked, lifting his head to look down into her wide, sated eyes. He wasn’t smiling.

Her fingers lifted to his beloved face above her. She could still feel him, deep in her body, throbbing, as she was throbbing.

He brushed his mouth lightly over hers. “How many times have I had you,” he whispered, “and never bothered with a single precaution?”

“It would be hard for me to get pregnant,” she rationalized.

“It’s going to be easier than you ever dreamed,” he said drowsily. “I love babies.”

She was confused. Perhaps the convulsive pleasure had popped a major artery. She said so.

He chuckled again, moving so that the pleasure returned in teasing little spasms. “Probably we both did, but making babies is exciting, and I can’t stop trying.”

Her hands slid up to frame his face. “It’s the excitement of it,” she tried to explain, worried. “It’s new, and…”

He nibbled her upper lip. “It’s new and exciting, and that’s why I keep neglecting protection, hmm?”

“Isn’t it?”

“New and exciting? Yes.” He lifted up from her and looked down their bodies to where they were still tightly joined. “I’m thirty-four,” he said huskily. “You’re twenty-six.” His eyes went back to meet hers. “We’re used to each other in all the ways that matter, and now we find an explosive passion that shows no signs of weakening. In fact, if what just happened is any in
dication,” he added, moving again, sensuously, and watching her moan, “we’re becoming quite adept at giving each other pleasure.”

He started to lift away and she protested, but he sat back from her, kneeling over her prone body, studying every inch of her as if he’d never seen a woman nude before. Probably it should have embarrassed her. It didn’t. She liked his eyes on her.

“When we get back to Houston, the minute we get back,” he added to emphasize it, “we’re having blood tests and getting a marriage license.”

That was part of the fantasy. She smiled. She was dreaming, of course. She knew it, now. Cord Romero would never marry again. Hadn’t he said so a million times?

“Why are you smiling?” he asked warily.

“I’m dreaming,” she said simply.

He moved, an arrogant shift of his knees to push her long legs apart. He was still capable and growing more so by the second. He caught her upper thighs and drew her up to him, positioning her.

“Cord…” she whispered worriedly.

“You can take me,” he whispered back. He began to ease inside her in tiny, quick little thrusts of his hips that brought unexpectedly intense spasms of pleasure.

“It’s…too…soon,” she choked.

He was watching her body absorb him with eyes that contained equal measures of wonder and excitement. “I’ve never…done it like this,” he groaned. His hands tightened on
her thighs and his eyes began to dilate. “I’ve never watched…so intimately…”

“What do you see?” she whispered breathlessly.

“I see you…having me,” he bit off, flinching as the pleasure began to throb. “I see you opening…for me!”

She looked down and he lifted her away, letting her see. It was erotic. It was blatant. It was…!

She was moaning, twisting, throbbing. Her eyes were open, but she saw nothing. The pleasure, so intense before, was unbearable now. She caught the wet towels in both hands and gripped them until her knuckles turned white while he invaded her with slow, hard, merciless thrusts that lifted her hips rhythmically at first and then violently quick. Her last sane thought was that they were going to hurt each other. A second later, she became a meteor, flying headlong through space in a throbbing, fiercely hot tunnel of pleasure.

Cord felt her release in the seconds before he was twisted and convulsed by his own. He fell on her, his body heavy and hot and wet with sweat as they lay shivering together on the towels.

She trembled, gasping, as the exhaustion finally worked its way within her and left her too tired to move or speak. Her heartbeat was shaking both of them.

He pulled away before she could protest, if she’d had the breath. She felt him get to his feet and lift her, carrying her to the bed. Her last memory was of the cool sheets above and beneath her, and the darkness all around.

The next morning, she was more sore than ever. She woke
moaning and trying to find a comfortable position, which there wasn’t. She got up and dressed, wincing at even the most delicate touch of intimate things against her.

She was brushing her long hair when Cord opened the door and came in. He was wearing slacks and a knit shirt, his dark, slightly wavy hair combed, immaculate. He moved behind the vanity stool, took the brush from her hands, and began to work on her hair.

“You’re uncomfortable this morning,” he said without preamble. “I’m sorry. I know better, but once I touch you, I can’t seem to stop.”

She met his eyes in the mirror, surprised by the apology. “I couldn’t stop, either,” she reminded him, and she smiled.

He bent to kiss her hair tenderly before he renewed his efforts with the brush. “Brought you something.” He took a small vial out of his pocket and pressed it into her hand.