Trading Secrets (13 page)

“Thanks,” he said in heartfelt tones. “I could use some.”

“Matt?”

He paused, glancing back at her. “What is it, Sabrina?”

“I just wondered. Were you freaked about seeing me?”

“I’ll give you the answer to that when you get around to answering the question I’ve been wanting to ask you.” Then he followed his son into the kitchen.

Teenage boys, Sabrina belatedly remembered, added a definite complication to life. One couldn’t talk about much in front of them because they were old enough to understand everything that was said. One couldn’t talk to them because they tended to respond in a monosyllabic mode. At least this one did. Sabrina wondered if her new nephew would be like Brad at thirteen. It was a depressing thought.

“Okay if I go watch television now?” Brad asked after twenty minutes of stuffing himself with hamburgers at the patio table. He was already on his feet, glancing at his father for permission.

“Don’t you want to take a swim?” Sabrina asked impulsively. It had been such a hot day and the evening was still very warm and humid.

“Nah.” Brad’s attention was on his father.

“Go watch television,” Matt agreed.

The two adults sat across from each other in silence, watching the young boy tromp into the air-conditioned apartment.

“Those boots must be incredibly uncomfortable,” Sabrina finally offered as the sliding glass door closed behind Brad.

“Wearing boots like that in this heat is more than uncomfortable. It creates a definite problem. I’d better stop at a drugstore on the way back to the motel and pick up some foot powder.”

Sabrina’s gaze swung back to him and she smiled. “You sound very knowledgeable on the subject.”

“I’ve worn boots like that in worse heat and humidity than this.” Matt leaned back in his webbed chair, staring at Sabrina. “My God, lady, it’s been a long month. I didn’t even realize just how long until I walked into that shop this afternoon and saw you again.”

“You haven’t answered my question,” she mused gently, searching his expression. It felt marvelously, unexpectedly right to have him sitting here on her patio. “Were you freaked about seeing me?”

“Brad’s vocabulary leaves something to be desired.”

“You were, weren’t you?”

Matt’s mouth twisted in a grin. “I wasn’t sure what kind of reception I’d get,” he admitted. “I could never quite figure you out down in Mexico.”

“And I could never quite figure you out.”

“I suppose that’s why we kept circling each other looking for openings.” Matt’s eyes were steady. “You haven’t answered my question yet.”

“You haven’t asked it.”

He hesitated thoughtfully and then said, “I’ve been wondering for the past month if you really would have hated yourself in the morning.”

Sabrina looked down at the dregs of the wine she had been drinking and spoke the truth. “I’ve wondered the same thing myself.”

There was another beat of silence and then Matt leaned forward. His hand covered hers and Sabrina nearly jumped at the remembered sensation caused by his rough-tipped fingers. She looked up and found his eyes shimmering with intensity.

“Reach any conclusions?” he asked.

“No.”

“I’d like to hang around Dallas until you do,” Matt said huskily.

Sabrina stared at him. “I thought you were heading straight back to Mexico with Brad.”

“Brad thinks that’s where we’re going, but I’ve got some doubts. Come on, Sabrina, let’s take a walk.” He was on his feet, reaching down to pull her up beside him before she could protest.

“Why are you thinking twice about taking Brad to Mexico?” she asked, falling into step beside him. His hand stayed linked with hers.

“A lot of reasons. One of which is that I may be taking Brad on a permanent basis and I can’t see raising him in Acapulco. Moving back to the States makes for some complications, though.”

“Such as?”

“As you pointed out down in Mexico, I don’t have a lot of marketable skills. It could take a while to find a decent job. I had something coming up that I had to put on the back burner when I got the call about Brad. It would have been good for several thousand up front. Might make a nice cushion while I hunt around for something more stable.”

Sabrina stopped, staring up at him in astonishment. “Several thousand? Dollars?”

Matt nodded, absently studying the empty, fenced-in terrace around the pool. “Yeah. But I’ve got Brad with me now. I’d have to figure out a way to—” He broke off. “What’s wrong, Sabrina?”

“I was just wondering what sort of little something you had coming up that would provide you with a nest egg of several thousand dollars,” she muttered.

Matt smiled bleakly. “A job for an old acquaintance of mine.”

“A job that does capitalize on the few talents you picked up running covert operations in the military?” she challenged softly.

“Sabrina, honey, how did we get off on this subject? I haven’t seen you in over a month. The last thing I want to do is talk business.”

“You started the conversation!”

“Jesus,” he complained with a groan. “We’re arguing and I haven’t even kissed you hello!” Then he was pulling her fiercely into his arms.

Sabrina sighed against his mouth, the strange tension that had been plaguing her all evening finally seeking release. Her body leaped into vivid awareness as his hands moved down the length of her back to the curve of her hips. She wrapped her arms around his neck and parted her lips for his insistent, hungry kiss. Tonight, after a month of wondering, she still didn’t know how she had left Acapulco without finding out how she would have felt about herself and her rules after making love with Matt August.

“Sabrina, Sabrina, honey, I’ve been wanting you. I’m just realizing how much.” Matt reluctantly freed her mouth and began to nibble urgently at the line of her throat. He held her close in the gathering shadows of the summer evening and let her feel the heavy readiness in him.

Sabrina trembled with the focusing excitement she had been aware of all afternoon. This was what had been making her so restless this past month. Wondering what she could have had with Matt had been eating at her, making her uneasy and unsatisfied. Now she had a second chance. A chance to find out what she had missed.

“Tomorrow night,” Matt’s voice was low and husky, his fingers flexing luxuriously into the curve of her buttock. “Have dinner with me tomorrow night.”

“Yes.”

“There’s a war film Brad wants to see. After dinner we’ll send him to the theater. We’ll have some time alone. A couple of hours to … talk.”

Sabrina heard the hesitation before he filled in the blank with the word talk and she lifted her head from his shoulder, smiling faintly.

“I’d like a chance to talk to you again. I think I missed some of those arguments we always had in Mexico.”

“The problem in Mexico was that we did too damn much talking!” With a muttered exclamation Matt released her and turned to start back toward the apartment. “We’d better get back before Brad wonders if I’ve deserted him. The kid’s been rejected enough lately.”

“You’ve taken on quite a project in Brad.”

“He’s my son,” Matt said simply. “And his mother doesn’t want him any longer.”

“That leaves you.”

“Yes. That leaves me.”

“Priorities,” Sabrina remarked, thinking about it. She wondered where she fit in Matt August’s new set of priorities. And then she wondered where he fit in hers.

“Priorities.” Rafferty Coyne sat at the desk in his hotel room a few miles away and repeated the word for the benefit of the two men who stood in front of him. “Priorities. We must keep them straight. You handled the initial contact very badly this afternoon, Griffin. What on earth did you do to make her think you were from the IRS?”

Griffin glanced with barely concealed disgust at the briefcase that was on the desk beside Coyne. Somehow that leather case represented its owner. Aloof, relentlessly aristocratic, correct in every detail. The man could be so goddamned prissy at times. It was impossible to imagine dirt ever getting under those carefully manicured nails, much less blood. Coyne was the planner, the detail expert, the organizer. He left the fieldwork to others, which meant he left the dirt and the blood to others.

“I’ve told you, I don’t know how she got that idea. She’s probably been in a hassle with them and it’s been on her mind. When she saw my ID she just jumped to conclusions.”

“She took off out of the parking lot like a bat out of hell before we could give her the real cover story,” Shadwell explained with weary patience. He didn’t care for Coyne any more than Griffin did, but that was not unusual. Shadwell didn’t know anyone who actually liked Rafferty Coyne.

Coyne looked at Shadwell, his eyes devoid of any emotion. “I simply don’t see how you could have lost the opportunity to talk to her.”

Griffin stirred with suppressed irritation, stalking over to the window to glower out at the far-flung lights of Dallas. “You’re the one who said that small-business, Chamber-of-Commerce, middle-class types like her just loved to talk to folks from the government.”

“Normally they do,” Coyne said smoothly. “They’re usually very cooperative with anyone who flashes a U.S. government ID. Comes from years of seeing tales of the FBI on television, I expect.”

“Miss Chase didn’t exactly appear overly respectful,” Griffin said. He turned back to face Coyne.

“What now? Do you want us to try again?”

Coyne shook his head, considering the matter. “Not just yet. Let her assume she had a small brush with the IRS. It may be just as well now that we know the child is involved. The boy may be more important in the long run.”

“What if she checks and finds out the IRS didn’t send anyone out to talk to her?” Shadwell ventured.

Coyne favored him with a condescending glance. “Everyone is accustomed to the notion of being unable to deal in a logical, straightforward manner with the IRS. If Miss Chase phones and finds out they know nothing of any of their agents being sent out to see her, she’ll simply assume that, as usual, the tax people are entangled in their own bureaucracy. One hand doesn’t know what the other is doing. She’ll be disgusted but she’ll think it sounds normal.”

“And August?”

“We’ll give him a few days to pay his respects to Miss Chase and see what happens. It’s possible he won’t stay long. Their affair in Mexico was brief. A matter of days.”

Griffin frowned. “You said time was running out.”

Coyne nodded, unconcerned. “It is. Time is always running out. But we’re not at a crisis point yet.”

“What happens if we get to that point?” Shadwell demanded.

“I will take care of it. In the meantime you will do as you are told. Your failure to do so this afternoon has not resulted in any major problems, but I do not want to see such actions become a habit.”

Shadwell wisely swallowed his initial response. There was too much money riding on this to risk telling Coyne to go to hell. “You’re sure August will cooperate?”

“Eventually. One way or another. He cooperated magnificently last time,” Coyne reminded Shadwell.

“He didn’t exactly realize he was cooperating,” Shadwell pointed out.

“Poor bastard never knew what hit him,” Griffin muttered, turning back to the window. “It was incredible that he got out alive, let alone with five of his men.”

“Major August’s survival skills were far more developed than I’d expected,” Coyne admitted calmly. “Which is one of the reasons I want him on this project.”

“You also want him because Valdez trusts him and will work with him.” Shadwell, glancing at his partner’s back, wondered if Griffin was getting hungry. Neither of them had eaten yet this evening. Coyne tended to forget about details like food when he was working. The man had more sheer tenacity than just about anyone Shadwell had ever met.

“Ramon Valdez is a very cautious man,” Coyne agreed. “It is one of the reasons he has stayed alive this long.”

“August would never deliberately help you set him up,” Griffin warned from the window. “Even if you convinced him that it was in the U.S. interest to do so. August operates under his own code. He and Valdez respect each other.”

“A rather old-fashioned code in some ways. I’m depending on it.”

He was depending on more than just Matt August’s outdated code of honor, Coyne admitted silently. He was also staking a great deal on the belief that a man in August’s position would not be able to resist the chance to prove to himself that he could still handle the kind of job for which he had been trained.

Coyne considered himself something of a student of human nature. And his studies of Matt August indicated a man who would ultimately be compelled to accept the chance Coyne was offering: the chance to wipe out the memory of failure.

But just in case he had misjudged August’s sense of priorities, Coyne intended to have a little insurance lined up for emergencies. When August had dropped everything in Mexico to head for Texas, Coyne had toyed briefly with the notion of making Sabrina Chase the small rabbit he would pull out of the hat in the event that August became obstinate.

The boy represented a much more interesting and useful alternative.

“So when do we go to Mexico?” Brad was sprawled on the bed, idly thumbing through one of his vast collections of men’s action magazines. Two of his three suitcases were filled with them. He didn’t look up as he asked the question but continued to study an ad for a black double-edged commando dagger.

Matt took his time answering as he knotted his tie carefully in front of the mirror. “I’m not sure, Brad. Maybe the first of next week.”

“Oh, geez!” His tone laced with disgust, Brad tossed aside the magazine he had been reading and picked up another. This one was titled Mercenary Male and the cover art featured a rather vicious-looking brute in battle gear. He had an Uzi machine gun casually cradled in his arm and was clearly ready to point it in someone’s direction: for a price. “You said we’d go to Acapulco as soon as you looked up the chick. Well, now you’ve seen her. Can’t we go?”

“We’ve got a whole summer ahead of us, Brad.” And maybe a lot longer than that, Matt added in grim silence. He thought of those few minutes of remote, austerely civil conversation with Ginny. “There’s no rush.”