Hot Ice (4 page)

"Don't you want to know our destination?"

She rolled her head in his direction without opening her eyes. "Would it make any difference if I said I didn't want to go there?"

"No."

Exactly. "Then let's keep it a surprise, shall we?"

Liberating her only to turn around and abandon her wouldn't have any payoff for him. And he'd want a payoff. He'd gone to considerable trouble to rescue her. So he wanted something that had been in the safe at the Morales estate, did he? What?

The Barter sapphires? No. She didn't think this guy would go to all this trouble for a necklace or two. Not the jewelry, despite its value. She'd netted at least five mil in jewels alone. A nice evening's work.

What
hadn't
been inside that safe were the Blue Star diamonds she'd hoped to find along with the sapphires. Like a dog chasing a car, she'd pursued the Blue Stars all over Europe and half the free world for the last five years. Once again Morales had moved them.

She'd been in an unaccustomed hurry with this job from the start. Usually, her heists were planned to a hair, and she didn't
have
to hurry. But she'd had a dammed persistent itch on the back of her neck all day. Taylor never ignored a sign. She'd speed-robbed the Moraleses. Instead of picking and choosing, she'd swept the contents into the thin black silk bag tied like a Colt .45 to her thigh, then split through the third-story window and down the side of the house via a conveniently placed trellis.

No sweat.

The self-addressed mailer, tucked down the leg of her jeans, had been stuffed and sealed as she darted between hedges and shrubs. She'd scaled the estate's wall, and avoided the Dobbies sleeping where she'd left them, courtesy of the doped treats she'd tossed them when she'd arrived.

No one had seen her. No one.

The mailbox had been on the way back to the hotel. The entire heist had taken barely an hour. Start to finish. Yet the local police knocked before she'd closed the door to her hotel room.

Taylor opened her eyes a slit to see if her vision had returned. It hadn't. Damn. She hurt all over. The least of her problems at the moment. Her heart, already beating a little too fast, sped up even more. She pushed the alarm back.
Don't panic
, she warned herself.
Do not panic
. She'd been in trouble before, and she'd always found a way out of it. Except she'd never been blind in a foreign country before. A hard knot of fear lodged in her throat.

She curled her fingers into her palms until the pain from her short nails digging into her skin centered her.
Concentrate
. Panic was wasted energy. Not having her vision put a large crimp in her plans, but nothing was impossible. She calculated the time close to midnight. Her flight left at ten a.m. All she had to do was make it through what was left of the night, grab a cab in the morning, and get on that plane.

Who'd tipped off the police? The woman who'd tried to hire her yesterday? Or—what was this guy's name? Oh, yeah. "Where'd you get a name like Huntington?"

"Call me Hunt."

"For short?" Taylor asked, almost amused. "But not for long?"

"You
are
quick."

The fact that after all these years of being invisible, two people had not only discovered
who
she was, but
where
she was, freaked her out. Where had she zigged instead of zagged? Taylor rubbed the warning prickle at the back of her neck. "Not quick enough apparently. How did you find me?"

"In that cell? Followed the police trail. In general? Thousands of man-hours."

Taylor's heart slammed into her ribs, knocking a loud and instant warning. She had to moisten her lips before she could speak."
Thousands
of man-hours?"

"Yes."

How fast were they going? Lord, she couldn't believe she was actually contemplating jumping out of a fast-moving vehicle, God only knew where, when she couldn't see. "Care to explain?"

"No."

She'd never experienced claustrophobia before, but she did now. This entire situation, coupled with being unable to see, made her feel as though she were in a very small box without any air. Her stomach lurched with anticipation—
never call it fear
—as the vehicle slowed. She fumbled for the door handle. There wasn't one.

"Don't bother." The car stopped. "We're here."

Chapter Four

"Let's go," Hunt instructed when she sat there unmoving, head tilted. Her eyes didn't track when he passed a hand in front of her nose. Hell. She still couldn't see. "Here, take my hand. Watch the curb."

Her fingers were slender and filthy dirty as she gripped his hand and let him pull her from the car. As she gracefully unfurled from the seat and stood beside him, Hunt realized she wasn't as petite as he'd first thought. Her head reached his shoulder, so she was at least five-eight.

He took a good look at her. She was dressed as he was, all in black. Jeans, loosely fitting long-sleeve black T-shirt, black running shoes. Body tall and slender. Skin: Mediterranean dark. Hair: shoulder length and a matted, dusty black.

Heavily lashed dark chocolate eyes focused a few inches to the left of his face. A fast-beating pulse leapt at the base of her throat, and a sheen of perspiration filmed her skin, but she sounded merely curious instead of frightened when she asked calmly, "Where are we?"

"Somewhere the authorities won't find you. For the moment. Come on."

There were no streetlights to speak of. The shops up and down the street were either abandoned or their owners just didn't give a damn. The T-FLAC safe house, Villa D'Este, looked like the dozens of other derelict hotels and businesses lining the city.

During the day and late into the night,
gamines
of all ages and sizes ran wild here, dodging vehicles and fists alike in search of a pocket to pick. The street kids were all bedded down somewhere for the night, so it was quiet at this hour. Come morning it would be a different story. The common denominators for the neighborhood were poverty and filth.

"Where the cops won't find me. Not a lot of information to go on," she told him dryly.

Was she really not able to see, or was she bullshitting? If it was bs, she was a damn good actress. "Fifteen steps to the front door, then one stair up."

As she walked beside him she blinked repeatedly as if trying to clear her vision. Hunt dragged his gaze away from the rapid pulse throbbing at the base of her sweat-dampened throat. Despite her bravado, she was scared. She had reason to be.

Her iron control over her emotions reluctantly impressed him, and he felt a mild twinge of sympathy. He dismissed the thought the moment it surfaced. She was nothing more than a means to an end, and, as good as she was, had already caused him months of delay. This was more than a recovery operation. She was a small—albeit vital—cog in the far more important wheel of the mission to come.

He hoped to hell this inconvenience wasn't an indication of things to come.

The open door of the hotel cut the darkness, spilling golden light onto the filthy street. Hunt kept her hand in his and angled his body to guide and stabilize her. Her fingers were clammy, her back rigid, as she walked beside him with a natural grace only slightly marred by her lack of sight. A fine shiver traveled down her body as she stumbled over a rough patch, and she clenched his hand in a death grip to keep her balance.

"Easy," he steadied her. "Step." Her hesitation as she took the step was infinitesimal. "This really discombobulates you, doesn't it?"

She stepped up carefully, allowing him to draw her into the dimly lit, grungy vestibule of the hotel before she turned her head to answer. "What? Being blind as a bat, led into a strange place, by a strange man, in a foreign city?" she said dryly. "Discombobulate isn't quite the word I'd use. But the situation certainly makes me uncomfortable, and cautious."

"Helpless."

She hesitated for a moment, as if considering the possibility. "Temporarily.
Very
temporarily." She stopped walking and pulled him to a stop.

Hunt looked down. She wasn't unattractive. He suspected that once cleaned up, her looks would improve.

"Just because I can't see you," she told him tightly, "doesn't mean I can't protect myself. You got me out of a bad situation, and I appreciate it. But if you've brought me here to something worse—think again."

He was close enough to see she wore contact lenses, and he wondered almost absently if she wore them to see better or to change the color of her eyes. "You're in no danger from me as long as you give me what I want."

"And you're in no danger from me," she shot back. "If what
you
want is what
I
want."

"I can be quite persuasive," Hunt told her, steering her across the lobby once more.

She turned her face up and gave him a sweet smile. "And
I
can be quite stubborn—What? A step?"

"No. Keep going." Her unexpected smile threw him for a loop and shot an unexpected jolt of desire straight to his groin. He reminded himself that he was past the age to be aroused by something as false as a woman's smile. His body vehemently disagreed.

Standing behind the reception desk, watching their slow approach, Gil hand-signed a question. Hunt pointed to his eyes. Gil nodded. The man had run the safe house autonomously for the past ten years or so, and he knew everything that went on in and around San Cristóbal.

In his weekly report to HQ, Gil had alerted T-FLAC to the arrival of the Morales family at their summer home. He'd also acquired a copy of the Moraleses' party guest list. He'd been the one who reported the theft.

Hunt didn't give a damn about the stolen diamonds. She could keep those. It was what was in the safe
with
the rocks that T-FLAC wanted. Their informant inside of Morales's organization had been vague on the details. The person had clearly been scared witless. All she knew was that the disk held data, possibly codes to access intel on yet another of
Mano del Dios's
world domination threats. The information, however flimsy, from this particular source was enough to activate every available T-FLAC operative to discover what that disk held.

If things had gone according to plan, this woman would have stolen the disk for T-FLAC, and handed it over hours ago. What a bloody waste of time
this
was. By now the intel should be in the hands of people trained to put an end to Morales and his
Mano del Dios
, Hand of God, terrorist group. Instead, here he was, extracting and babysitting a blind woman.

"Do you require a doctor for the señorita?" Gil asked, handing over a key from the rack behind him.

Her head jerked toward the sound of Gil's voice and her fingers gripped his as she tried to orient herself. She'd thought they were alone.

"Need a doctor?" Hunt asked, taking the key with a frown. She'd become paler, her hand clammier.

She licked her lower lip. "Not here. If I need one, I'll wait till I get home."

He signed to Gil that he wanted the doctor there first thing in the morning. Gil nodded. "Sure?" he asked the woman.