Extreme Danger

Book 5: The McClouds & Friends

by Shannon McKenna

Genres: General Fiction; Romance; Suspense

Synopsis

Skinny-dipping in a stranger's pool-it's as close to reckless as good girl Becca Cattrell has ever been. But the house Becca picked for her midnight swim just changed owners. And her harmless escapade has landed her at the mercy of a brutal, terrifying organization who'll make sure she doesn't live to tell a soul.



The most gorgeous woman Nick Ward has ever laid eyes on is also the worst luck he's ever had. Becca's presence at this top-secret meeting place won't just destroy the undercover operation he's been working on, it's liable to get them both killed. But to his surprise, Becca isn't running away-from the danger or from him . . .

Release date: September 13, 2022

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 528

Sample

Just a little engagement celebration, the e-mail had said. An intimate get-together for close friends, at the bride-to-be’s family’s country home out in Endicott Falls.

Hah. There had to be forty-five, fifty people circulating out there on the terrace and the party was going strong, music blasting from the sound system. A definite wedding vibe. No mistaking that taint.

Nick hated weddings. Everything about them made him tense. Even the super happy ones, when the bride and groom were deliriously in love and had cartoon birdies fluttering in circles around their head. Especially that kind, Nick thought, staying in his hiding place behind the climbing rose trellis. The higher you flew, the farther you had to fall. And Sean McCloud was flying very high tonight.

Watching the guy and his fiancée, Liv, laughing and kissing, stuffing tidbits into each others’ glowing faces, slurping champagne, gave him the same tight feeling in his gut that he got from shark movies. Happy little kids frolicked in the surf, and meanwhile, dadum…dadum… He’d never figured out why people voluntarily watched movies like that. He himself did everything in his power to avoid that kind of emotion. He’d felt enough already to last a lifetime.

He ground his teeth, scanning the room for Tamara. She was the only reason he’d come to this damn party, and the only reason that he stayed, too. One more chance to pump her for info on Vadim Zhoglo. Before she cut Nick’s balls off to make herself a necklace. That was the threat she’d made the last time he’d pestered her about it.

He was pondering that unpleasant prospect while he watched Davy McCloud, one of the groom’s brothers, trying to persuade his extremely pregnant wife to dance with him. He wasn’t having much luck at it, but a passionate kiss with lots of tongue seemed to appease him.

Goddamn show-offs, the whole pack of them.

There were plenty of hot young single women at the party, lots of plunging necklines and come-hither glances. Some of them had been strategically positioning themselves to be on his prowl trajectory. Bleah.

He used to enjoy this kind of situation, way back in the dawn of time, before his life went to shit. He used to have a smooth way with women, at least in the initial approach. He had enough charm to get them into bed and enough skill to show them a damn good time once they were there. But not a lot else, as the ladies soon found out. It got kind of exhausting after a while.

But he couldn’t work up the energy to care about that tonight.

Two young girls jostled him in the doorway where he lurked, jolting him out of his reverie. They reeled away, giggling. Cute kids. About the same age as Sergei’s little Sveti. If she was still alive.

Which got more doubtful every fucking day.

“Hey. Try to contain your joy, why don’t you. Your enthusiasm is a little overwhelming.”

Nick stiffened at the familiar voice. He took a swallow of his whiskey, and turned to face Connor McCloud, the groom’s other brother, and Nick’s former colleague in the Cave, the FBI task force to which they both used to belong. The guy was clean-cut tonight, for him. Connor had probably been blackmailed into shaving and cutting his hair for the occasion, but he still managed to look rumpled. And very tired.

The cause of his exhaustion slept on his chest, nestled in a front carrier. Four-month-old Kevin McCloud. The carrier’s star, moon and teddy bear motif looked truly weird with Con’s dark tailored suit.

Nick frowned at the small, reddish-looking creature. “Kid threw up on your jacket,” he observed with distaste.

Con’s eyes went soft as he glanced down at the baby. “Sure did,” he said proudly. “He’s a regular little geyser. From both ends.”

Nick was failing in his attempt to keep his lip from curling. He put his drink to his mouth for camouflage, took a swig.

“Excuse me for mentioning it, but that stuff is not doing your mood any good. Maybe you should slow down,” Con suggested.

Nick fought the urge to snarl, and lost. “Con, it’s great that you and your brothers are wallowing in conjugal bliss and baby shit. I’m happy for you all. That doesn’t give you the right to preach. So fuck off.”

Con’s green eyes took on that piercing laser glow he got when he was in investigative mode. “It’s getting to you.” His quiet voice sounded worried. “That thing that happened in Boryspil. You’ve been tied in a fucking knot ever since. And this bug up your ass about Zhoglo—”

“It’s not your bug. It’s not your ass. Leave it alone.” Nick turned his eyes away, and scowled out over the dark garden.

He knew what Con was thinking. He thought of it too, whenever he laid eyes on the guy, which was one of the reasons he tried to avoid his former good friend, who used to trust him with his life.

Nick’s fucking finest moment. That mega lapse in judgment that had almost gotten Connor and his lady slaughtered by that psycho, Kurt Novak. And while he was torturing himself, there was Sergei to consider, split open from neck to groin, eyes still aware, pleading silently for the mercy blow. And Sveti. Sergei’s twelve-year-old daughter, abducted six months ago. Who knew where, or to what.

That had been Sergei’s primary punishment for betraying Zhoglo. The bloody torture and gruesome death part had been just for fun.

Nick had nightmares about Sveti’s fate, when he managed to sleep at all. He’d been searching for months for rumors, clues, whispers about her. He’d gotten exactly nowhere.

Con wasn’t the kind of guy to hold grudges, which bugged the shit out of Nick tonight. In his current mood, being hated was preferable to being forgiven. Forgiveness implied too much responsibility.

Con’s son woke and began to squawk. The two men gazed at the infant, bemused. Con tried various cuddling and jiggling maneuvers, but the squawks rose into wails that drove into Nick’s ears like nails.

“I better find Erin,” Connor mouthed through the din to Nick’s relief. “I think he’s hungry.”

Tension buzzed in Nick’s body as the other man strode away, towards the glowing brunette who lit up with a megawatt smile when she lifted the squalling thing out of the carrier pouch. Erin McCloud, Connor’s busty, luscious wife. The women those McCloud guys picked out to marry sure were easy on the eyes. All three of them.

The sharp poke to his shoulder made him whip into guard mode, grabbing for a pistol that wasn’t there tonight.

It was just Tamara, the McCloud guys’ mysterious outlaw friend. As beautiful as ever. Her currently dark hair was twisted up into a roll, her golden eyes were full of cool amusement, her perfect body was poured into a skintight gold silk minidress with a high Chinese collar.

“What the fuck was that? A stiletto?” he snapped.

She waggled long, gilded fingernails at him. “Lighten up, Nikolai.”

“Don’t call me that,” he replied sourly. His birth name reminded him of his father. Thinking about Anton Warbitsky was a sure recipe for a stinking foul mood. He’d changed his last name to distance himself from that sadistic son of a bitch. Not that it worked worth a damn.

They shut up as a dancing couple swayed by, slow dancing to the old blues tune blaring on the speakers. It was the guy with the nose, the computer expert that hung out with the McClouds. Miles. He clutched Cindy, Connor’s sexpot sister-in-law, and swung her down into a deep, flashy dip. She giggled, and he yanked her back up again for a smoochy kiss. They undulated away, entwined.

Too fucking much. At least he wouldn’t be invited to that wedding. Sean’s upcoming nuptials were going to be bad enough.

“Young love.” Tam’s voice had a metallic ring. “Sweet, isn’t it?”

“I give them six months,” he predicted darkly.

“Ding dong, you’re wrong. They broke the six month barrier a while back. They’re working on eight months.”

Nick shook his head. “Tick tock, tick tock.”

“Come on,” Tam murmured. “This is a party. These are your friends. Laugh, Nikolai. Smile. Even I manage that, in my brittle way. Fake it. Medicate yourself if you must. You’re a cigarette hole burned into the fabric of the universe.”

“I could leave.”

“Don’t go,” she murmured. “I might be able to cheer you up.”

Every muscle in his body went still. “With what?”

Her smile faded to an impassive mask. “Do you want to die young, Nikolai? Or do you want to linger in an old folks’ home?”

Excitement blasted like a chill wind over the landscape of his consciousness. The hairs on the back of his neck stiffened, his skin prickling coldly with a mix of hope and dread. “What have you got?”

She stared at him. “An express ticket to hell.” She waited for a beat. “Don’t look so eager. You make me feel guilty.” She nodded her head towards the side garden, filled with dark, unlit lumps of topiary. “Let’s talk.”

Their feet crunched on the white gravel path. She led him to the deserted gazebo. He tried to wait for her to speak first. If he showed too much eagerness, Tam would just play him like a cat with a mouse.

She waited him out. “What have you got?” he finally snapped.

“Not much,” she said. “Rumors, whispers, favors. Possibilities. You know Pavel Cherchenko?”

His jaw clenched. Oh, yeah. He knew Pavel. Pavel was one of the men who had almost certainly supervised Sergei’s torture and murder.

“Met him a few times in Kiev, when I was undercover,” he said. “Arms deals. One of Zhoglo’s lieutenants. A real shithead. What about him?”

“I know the woman who runs the agency that supplies Pavel with his biweekly blow job when he’s stateside,” Tam said. “She owes me a favor. A big one.”

“What kind of favor?” Nick couldn’t help but ask.

Tam smiled blandly. “Her life, among other things. The last time the girl serviced Pavel, he was all upset because one of his key men had shot himself. Pavel has a problem. He talks when he drinks. Anyway, looks like something big is coming down. He needs someone trustworthy, with perfect English, to take care of housing and security details.”

Nick’s mind raced. “Something big? Housing? For who?”

“How the fuck would I know, Nikolai? That’s for you to find out. So, in the interests of getting you definitively killed and removing this damn stone from my shoe once and for all, I asked Ludmilla to recommend you, my friend.”

“Me?” He frowned at her. “How…”

“Your alter ego, actually. Arkady Solokov,” she said.

“How do you know about Arkady?” he demanded, outraged. His arms-trafficking undercover persona was a deeply buried secret.

Tam rolled her eyes. “So? Shall I give her Arkady’s number?”

“Fuck, yeah.” Nick was dazed. “Tam, how is it that you have all these contacts with the sex workers who service the Russian mob?”

“None of your business. Don’t push your luck. I should probably go into hiding as soon as your taillights disappear, now that I’ve mixed myself up in your suicidal bullshit. What a fucking bore.”

“Aren’t you in hiding already?” he asked.

“It’s a matter of degree,” she grumbled. “I’ll have to stay on the move, leave my comfortable house, my studio, my business. I may even find it necessary to make myself unattractive.” She shuddered with distaste. “Be warned, Nikolai. Milla is doing this as a favor to me. If you fuck up, and she gets hurt, I will cut your throat.”

“I understand,” he said. “I just want to know if—”

“There is nothing else I can tell you,” she said crisply. “This conversation is over. Do not ask me for anything else. And keep in mind, brokering arms deals undercover is one thing. Getting up close and personal with Zhoglo, as Arkady, is going to be very different. If you don’t have the guts to do whatever Zhoglo might ask of you, you’re dead. And if you do have the guts, you’re damned. Think about it before I give Arkady’s cell number to Milla.”

“I’m thinking. I thought,” he said promptly. “I’ve decided. I owe you, Tam. If you ever need anything from me—”

“You still don’t get it, do you? I haven’t done you any favors. I’ve just cut your life short by about fifty years.” She glanced at the glass in his hand. “Depending on how hard you’d drink, of course.”

He shrugged. “Maybe. I wouldn’t know what the hell to do with those fifty years anyhow.”

She sighed out a long breath, pressing her slender hand against her midriff. The look in her eyes mirrored his own.

Cold, wind-whipped wastes. Secrets in the shadows. Rocks and hard places.

“You want to do me a favor?” Her voice was low. “Do the world a favor. Kill Zhoglo. Don’t just spy on him. Don’t just hand him over to the law. Put a bullet through his brain stem at close range.”

He thought about Sveti. “Tam, I—”

“Kill him if you can. If you can’t, then God help you.”

She turned, and disappeared into the gloomy shadows.

 

Nadvirna, The Ukraine

Vadim Zhoglo slowly sipped the fine brandy from the crystal snifter in his hand and gazed out at the snowy peaks of the Carpathian mountains. “Transport details for the first shipment are in place, Pavel?” he asked.

“Yes,” the man replied stolidly. “Everything’s arranged.”

Zhoglo turned to look at him. “And you can vouch for each one of your people this time? No more surprises, like six months ago?”

Pavel’s hand darted to the collar of his suit, tugging to make space for his large and lumpy Adam’s apple to bob and twitch.

That was his answer. Again. Zhoglo closed his eyes. “What has happened this time, Pavel?” he asked with deceptive gentleness.

“Nothing serious,” Pavel hastened to assure him. “But one of the men in place in Puget Sound had to be, ah, replaced.”

“Killed?” Vadim frowned. “How is this possible?”

“Suicide,” Pavel forced out, his voice gravelly and reluctant. “He hanged himself. Pyotr Cherchenko.”

“Your nephew, no? The one you had me arrange those expensive immigration documents for? I see. Yet another wasted investment,” Vadim said. “My condolences, Pavel. And his replacement?”

Sweat shone on Pavel’s pale forehead. “A man named Arkady Solokov. From Donetsk. He’s taking care of security on the island.”

“And you can vouch for this Solokov? Without hesitation?”

Pavel’s eyes slid away. “We’ve had dealings with him before. He was with Avia. He brokered those deals for the M93 grenade launchers and rockets to Liberia four years ago. He seems very competent. And his English skills are—”

“Seems competent,” Vadim repeated, with ironic emphasis. “I invest millions in this project, and you tell me this person ‘seems’ competent.”

“I had to get someone in place quickly, Vor, and I am sure that—”

“I am sure of nothing. Except that you’re an idiot who compels me to take risks. Very well. We will proceed as planned. You may go.”

But Pavel lingered, shuffling his overlarge feet.

“What is it?” Vadim barked. “You’re boring me, Pavel.”

“My—my sons?” Pavel faltered. “You promised that we could have Sasha and Misha back if I—”

“The agreement was that you could have your sons back if you corrected the error you made in that unfortunate business last year. But you have not, Pavel. You have compounded your mistake.”

“Vor, please. My boys are just two and eleven, and—”

“I am not heartless. You may have one son back. The other goes out with the first shipment. To defray the cost of your errors.”

Pavel’s face drained to the color of ash. “One? But I—but Marya—” The clock ticked loudly. “Which one?” he whispered.

Vadim shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. There is equal demand for vital organs from two-year-olds and eleven-year-olds.” He smiled indulgently. “Take an evening to think about it, Pavel, by all means. Discuss it with your wife. Let me know your decision in the morning.”

Pavel stood like a statue, eyes staring. Zhoglo pushed a button on his belt to summon two large thugs. They hustled the man away.

Skinny-dipping. Skydiving. Crewing on a yacht. Camping under the stars in the Sahara. Backpacking through Europe. Getting a cute tattoo. Having passionate love affairs with untamed guys with lots of rippling muscles. The list went on and on, all the crazy things girls did before they calmed down and found The One. Things that Becca Cattrell had never gotten around to trying.

Aw, face it, already. She’d never had the nerve, let alone the time.

Becca stubbed her big toe in the dark on a board that stuck up out of the wooden walkway. She braced herself for the time it took for pain to flash through her nerves and assault her brain. That interval was significantly slowed by the alcohol in her bloodstream. It got there eventually, though, and oh crap, that hurt.

She lifted the uncorked cabernet to her lips and took another swig. The bottle felt suspiciously light. So did her head.

No matter. She had to loosen up. By brute force, if necessary. She was no longer willing to play her divinely ordained role as a dutiful, dependable, reasonable goody-two-shoes twit. She was going to work her way down that list, and do every one of those silly things.

And enjoy them, too, goddamnit. Just watch her.

However, on isolated Frakes Island, there wasn’t a whole lot of choice in terms of running wild. Getting plastered alone, trespassing on some millionaire’s property, skinny-dipping in his pool without an invitation, hey—it was the best she could do without advance planning.

It did seem like something that Kaia would do. Kaia would probably take it a step further, though, and have exotic six-way sex in the millionaire’s pool. But alas, Frakes Island was deserted in mid-April. There was nobody around for Becca to have aquatic erotic adventures with.

Aw. Poor her. What else was new?

Kaia. Thinking about that girl made every muscle in her body contract. Becca shivered. She was naked beneath Marla’s terry-cloth robe, wearing only flip-flops that slapped against the boards of the walkway. She should have scrounged jeans and a sweater from Marla’s vacation garb. Being naked in the woods at night was unnerving. Too quiet for a city girl like her. The silence felt like a pillow, smothering her.

She didn’t have a stitch of appropriate clothing for this island adventure. She hadn’t had a chance to go home and pack before she dodged the tabloid reporters lying in wait for her in front of the Cardinal Creek Country Club. She’d been forced to sneak out the service entrance, and her boss, Marla, had rushed her straight from there to the ferry dock. Bye, Becca. Don’t hurry back. Don’t get eaten by a bear if you can help it.

Good ol’ Marla. Becca silently thanked her again for the heart-warming support.

She must have looked ridiculous when the taxicat guy had brought her over from the mainland in that cool catamaran. Breasting the waves in a houndstooth power suit. Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of cab. She took another swig.

To say nothing of her red, puffy eyes, her paleness, her bluish lips. Just call her the Corpse Bride. Hah. Except that she couldn’t get up the aisle as any sort of bride, corpse or otherwise.

She chased that thought away with a bigger swig of wine. Marla had assured her that she’d left plenty of casual clothes at her boyfriend Jerome’s vacation home. Marla was more or less Becca’s size. A bit less than more, actually. So she’d fast till she fit into Marla’s jeans. The wine diet. She stumbled, reeled, caught herself on a tree. Great.

The walkway that went around the perimeter of Frakes Island was abruptly bisected by another path. She lurched to a stop. So. This was the path that led to the millionaire’s swimming pool. The other direction should take her down to the millionaire’s boat dock.

She hazarded a left turn. It was like going through a narrow, vaulted tunnel, the trees were so thick. Bats and moths swooped and fluttered, darting crazily. The beam of her flashlight seemed so feeble.

So did she. God, what a hopeless wuss she was.

After a couple hundred yards, the big, glassed-in poolhouse loomed before her, skirted by a broad wooden deck.

She tiptoed up the steps, shone the flashlight on the door. Take a dip, Marla had urged. They never lock it. The owner is a nice, nerdy software mogul. He won’t mind. They keep it warm year round. I’ve swum there in November. You deserve it, after what you’ve been through.

Becca fitted the key into the door. It sighed open, letting out the faint scent of pool chemicals. She reached into the darkness, groped and flicked the first switch she found, then gasped in silent wonder.

Wow. A circle of lights lit the water from beneath, creating a jewel pattern of overlapping shadows on the mosaic tiles of the oval pool. The walls of the poolhouse were floor-to-ceiling art deco glasswork.

She walked in, dazzled. She set the wine bottle down, kneeled, scooped up some water. Caressingly warm. Swimming in that would be like swimming inside the heart of a perfectly cut sapphire. Magic.

She let the bathrobe puddle around her feet like a Hollywood diva, took off her glasses and shook her hair loose over her shoulders, letting it tickle her back. Becca stretched luxuriously, savoring the anticipation before she dove.

Ah. The shock of the water on her skin was delicious. She swam slowly across the pool in a lazy sidestroke. The water sloshed and gurgled sensually as she moved through it.

So beautiful and so solitary. Bliss. Just what she needed, after the last few days fending off media vultures. The extremely tense interview she’d had today with the club manager hadn’t helped much—the one about “taking some time away until the fuss dies down.”

She was afraid that was a code phrase for “you’re fired.”

Damn it, she liked her job. She didn’t love it, but she liked it, and more importantly, she needed it, with her younger sister and brother both in school and needing her help. Besides, she was the best events organizer the Cardinal Creek Country Club had ever had. She was an organizational freak. Busy, busy Becca. Wrestling a zillion details into a coherent whole satisfied her on a deep, emotional level. Kinky, maybe, but there it was.

But the powers that be at the club had a horror of bad publicity. Whether this sordid mess was her fault or not, the result might be the same. She might have to retool her resume. Do the old job hunt cha-cha-cha.

But who would want to hire a pathetic laughingstock like her?

At least if she was canned, she’d be spared the snickering from her ex-fiancé Justin’s guy friends at the club. Smirking, stinking, oinking bastards.

The pool was beautiful, magical, but her soul could not be soothed tonight. Her thoughts harried her like a hungry dog with a bone. What the hell was wrong with her, anyhow? Where were her wires crossed? She was a good person, damn it. Smart, sensible, practical, hardworking, unselfish. Relatively pretty, if not a raving beauty. She gave all she could to her family, her job. Her fiancé. She deserved better. She tried so freaking hard. All the time.

But such qualities evidently did not give men erections. Men wanted a whole different set of attributes and gifts. Men wanted women like Kaia. The pigs.

Gah. If only she’d played it cooler, hadn’t made such a big public deal of the engagement. But it had seemed too good to be true. Telling the four winds had made it feel more real. Justin was a great catch, after all. Charming, handsome. Rich, prominent family. Big plans. Justin was an up-and-coming prosecuting attorney with political ambitions. He’d told Becca once that she’d be a perfect politician’s wife.

She’d taken it as a sweet compliment at the time. Her heart had gone pitty-pat, imagining herself as the devoted political wife on the campaign trail with her handsome husband. Hah. How innocent.

She’d been so ready to move on from her rented apartment in a ramshackle old house. Ready to buy a real home, with a lawn for the kids she hoped to have. A minivan, with space for the car seats. Cargo room for strollers, travel cribs, dirt bikes, skateboards, scooters. Camping equipment for those family vacations. All day shopping trips to Ikea and Costco.

Her daydreams seemed so silly. To think she’d been holding court at their bachelor/bachelorette bash, giggling as she opened up Kama Sutra bath salts and his-n-her bath towels. Prattling like a ninny about the merits of marble countertops versus tile for her dream kitchen. And all the while Justin was giving his college girlfriend Kaia “a ride home.”

Some ride. Tall, sun-browned, sandalwood scented Kaia, with her yellow cornrow braids. Sun tattoos on her shoulders. Funky Nepalese jewelry. Nose and navel piercings.

Ready, willing, and able to perform a blow job on Justin as he drove down a busy city street. In Becca’s own car, no less. As it happened, Justin’s driving had been no match for Kaia’s skill at fellatio. Becca’s car had ended up wrapped around a telephone pole smack in the middle of a bustling shopping district. It was blind luck that he hadn’t killed someone. Or many someones.

Kaia now sported a collar and head brace. And as for Justin, well. A ring of tooth marks on that bastard’s dick was the least that he deserved. Becca could not find it in her heart to feel sorry for him.

It had just been a goodbye, for old times’ sake, Justin had protested, as soon as he was lucid enough to talk. He’d implied that Becca should be grateful he’d gone for oral sex, not vaginal penetration. How noble of him, to sacrifice his own pleasure out of respect for his fiancée. She ought to be overcome with gratitude at his manly restraint.

Um, not.

She’d expressed her feelings forcefully. Justin had gotten angry in his turn. He’d said several ugly things, calculated to make a woman want to huddle alone on a fog-bound island, far from everyone who knew what had happened. Which was to say, the whole world.

Becca stopped at the edge of the pool, hoisted herself partly out and pressed her hot face against her folded arms. Tears welled up and spilled. More fucking tears. She could fill this pool with them.

The scandal was too lurid to keep quiet. Justin’s family was too well known and it was all over the Internet. She’d googled herself and found thousands of mentions. And those reporters, baiting her, trying to get a reaction. Bottom-feeding bastards. The notoriety hurt. A storybook princess with a ring on her finger, she’d been recast in a crass burlesque. And not even a lead role. More like second banana. The reason poor, sex-starved Justin felt compelled to unzip his pants, just to get some blessed relief. The butt of a dumb dirty joke.

No one could talk about it without laughing, but it wasn’t funny. Her ex-fiancé had another girl’s tooth marks on his penis because Becca hadn’t been able to keep him satisfied in bed. Justin said so, when he got over feeling guilty and started getting pissed.

She’d tried, that was for sure. Justin was an attractive guy and a good kisser. But she’d always been sort of awkward and stiff when it came to sex. She’d been so sure it would get better as their intimacy deepened, as their trust grew, when she finally had a chance to relax.

So she wasn’t a red hot orgasmatron. So sue her. She tried to please. She did her best. She tried to be open-minded. Uninhibited. But as Justin had taken pains to point out, trying to be uninhibited was a contradiction in terms. Either you were, or you weren’t. Period.

That struck her as so unfair, that there were things that honest, earnest effort just couldn’t change. Either you turned a guy on, or you didn’t. Either you were sexy and fascinating, or you weren’t. Either you were a wild woman who gave blow jobs in a moving car, or you were the bland, safe type who would make a good politician’s wife.

Better now than after they got married, had kids. Narrow escape.

She shoved away from the poolside and launched into another angry lap, arms pinwheeling through the water.

Sparks. That was what Justin said she lacked. Seeing Kaia had made him realize this. Kaia was crackling with sparks. Becca wondered if the head brace would cramp her fiery sexual style. Poor thing. Big shame.

She touched the side, twisted to prepare for another push off—and two huge, strong hands seized her under the armpits and wrenched her up out of the pool. A thick, steely arm locked across her throat. Something hard pressed her temple. A gun. Oh God. A gun.

“Who the fuck are you?” The voice in her ear was a rasp of pure menace.

Ambush.

First thing Nick had thought when he saw the gorgeous naked chick on the video monitor. Preening and stretching, tossing her hair, showing off her tits for the camera. Diving into the pool like she owned the fucking place. The babe had nerves of steel, he’d give her that much.

He scooted backward, dragging her with him till he hit the glass poolhouse wall. The place made him feel like he was in a fishbowl when the lights were on. All glass, all around, and no cover of any kind.

He braced himself for a volley of bullets to explode out of the darkness, turn all that art deco flash into shrapnel.

Didn’t happen. Not yet. Any second, maybe. Any second.

He took the gun away from the girl’s neck just long enough to hit the switch and kill the underwater lights, plunging them into darkness. Hell. The beeper had jerked him out of a doze, and sleep-addled dumbfuck that he was, he hadn’t put on the infrared goggles before charging out here. It was a sure thing that the guys in the woods had them. If they were out there. The girl wiggled, trying to stand.

Uh-uh. Not in this lifetime. A deft kick that was calculated not to cause pain knocked her bare feet out from under her. He got her off balance so that she dangled helplessly in his grip.

“I—p-p-please—”

“Shut up. Not one word out of you. Got that?”

A shudder racked her body. Her head jerked in assent.

Jesus. How? Who? This op was so fucking secret and mysterious, he didn’t even know a lot of the details himself. Who knew about his cover, other than Tam? Had Ludmilla turned on him?

Maybe one of Zhoglo’s business rivals had an infiltrator. Maybe some foreign police agency had gotten tipped off, and was setting up a cozy welcome for Zhoglo when his boat docked. Nick didn’t blame them, but he stood to get slaughtered from every side. And Zhoglo was supposed to arrive tomorrow—aw, fuck.

He had to stay alive.

He eased the door open, dragging the naked chick out. Her feet scrabbled and her whimpering made it hard to listen for the rest of the team, wherever they were. He got her down the walkway to the house while his brain churned out possible explanations.

One: Naked Chick was an assassin, a black widow fuck-n-kill type. OK, she wasn’t packing anything he could see, but a body like hers was a weapon in itself. Might as well conk most guys over the head with a club as let them ogle tits like that. And of course there were weapons that were easy to hide.

He’d have to take a closer look. The idea sent a surge of interest into his groin. His one-eyed snake didn’t care if the bathing beauty was a icy-hearted killer.

Sometimes he wondered how men lived to adulthood, let alone old age, with that much concentrated stupidity dangling between their legs.

Two: Naked Chick was a distraction to engage his attention while the ambush moved in on him. The come-and-get-me way she’d presented her body for him in the poolhouse was one mother of a distraction. A sexual spell. The way her skin gleamed when he’d dragged her up, the jewel-like reflections on the disturbed water. It was magic.

Yeah. Sudden death could be so magical.

He guided her through the door and into the main house. Nice and easy. He didn’t need to be aggressive. She wasn’t fighting him. In one swift move he cuffed her slender wrists together behind her back, hooking them to the banister of the spiral staircase. He hadn’t lost his touch.

He stepped back, ran his eyes over her body. Wow. Whoever sent her must have a big budget. The girl was fucking amazing. He forced his mouth to close and went back to his situation analysis. Concentrate.

Three: Naked Chick was an expendable sex worker with no clue, and this was a perverse test from the big boss to see how Arkady behaved. Just the kind of game Zhoglo might play with a new guy to get a feel for his weaknesses.

Which would mean he was being watched. All the more reason not to lose his cool. And if he was careful, he might even get the upper hand. Worth trying.

“Who sent you?” he asked softly in Ukrainian.

She blinked, big-eyed. “Huh?”

She sounded American. Not likely, not for a job like this, Nick thought. “Who sent you? Tell me who sent you here,” he asked, in Russian this time.

No response.

He tried again, in Chechenyan, Estonian, Moldovian, Georgian, in case she was a ticking bomb sent by one of Zhoglo’s business rivals. He tried Hungarian and Romanian too, just in case. The big Z might have pissed off Daddy Novak. These psycho dudes were not known for their loyalty when billions of dollars were at stake.

Not so much as a spark of comprehension on her face. Just the appearance of shivering terror. But she was a professional, after all.

They’d picked their bait well, if bait she was. Stop-your-heart pretty, with all those pale, soft curves, huge green eyes. Just how Nick liked them. Not too skinny. Old world, Eastern European type of gorgeous, not a stringy Malibu beach babe.

He especially loved the mouth. The plump, parted, quivering lips made him speculate briefly about what her sexual specialty must be. She must be stellar at giving head.

He felt sort of honored. If he rated a top-of-the-line call girl to lure him to his doom, he must have hit the big-time when he wasn’t paying attention.

He wondered how old she was. He guessed twenty-three, twenty-five, max. Couldn’t have been in her current profession for long. That radiant-innocence vibe couldn’t be faked. Innocence faded real fast.

The visuals were perfect. She was still gleaming with water that trickled from her hair and ran down her body. Drops of water clinging to the dark fuzz between her thighs. Full tits, shown to advantage. Hey, cuffs were fun. Tight nipples. Helpless whimpers.

Nick dragged himself back to reality. Like hell she was helpless. She probably had a coil of wire fastened into her hair to garrotte him the second he turned his back.

“Who are you? And who sent you?” he asked in English.

“I’m, ah, Becca Cattrell,” she quavered, her voice high and thin.

“Becca Cattrell,” he repeated. “Who the fuck is Becca Cattrell?”

She shook her head, eyes wide. “Ah…me?”

“Not funny.” He tipped her chin up. “This isn’t a game. Who sent you?”

“M-m-marla sent me,” she gasped out.

“Yeah? Did she? Who’s Marla?”

“My b-boss,” she stammered out. “At the club.”

So Marla was a madam. OK. That was part of the puzzle, but not the part that interested him. “Why did this Marla send you to me?”

“Look, all she said was I could use the pool,” the girl quavered. “She told me th-th-that you were nice!”

Nice? She sounded betrayed. He chewed on that for a moment, staring at her. “I don’t know anyone named Marla,” he said. “And guess what? I’m not nice.”

“Oh.” She blinked like a trapped bunny.

He squelched a foolish impulse to trust her. “Wait here.”

Like she had any choice. He loped back into the security room to check out the infrared. Did a slow, steady sweep with the thermal imager, three hundred and sixty degrees. Nothing suspicious. He did it again. Nobody out there with warm blood and a beating heart except for wild animals.

He flicked another switch that showed two different camera angles on the spiral staircase and studied the girl from both sides. Her wet hair hung down, hiding her face. She was trembling. He had to get her warmed up.

No, he told himself sternly. He didn’t. Chivalry could get him killed. He had to think like Zhoglo. No heart, no conscience, no compassion. Cold as a cadaver in a meat locker.

He studied her body. She didn’t have the taut, nervy musculature of someone trained in hand-to-hand. She looked soft, touchable. Built for pleasure, not a sinewy, streamlined killing machine. He was tempted to rule out the possiblity of her being an assassin. But he really did have to search her first.

He hesitated as he went by the linen closet, then yanked out a towel, cursing himself for the soft-headed idiot that he was. He decided to add to his stupidity by grabbing the space heater he saw under a shelf. What the fuck did it matter if the assassin and/or call girl was a little more comfortable while he interrogated her? Zhoglo wasn’t watching. At least he hoped not.

The girl eyed him warily and Nick realized how strange he must look to her, carrying a goddamn space heater and towel like a cabana boy. Fuck it. He plugged it in, aimed a blast of hot air at her. She stiffened as he gathered a handful of her hair and twisted it gently to squeeze the water out, then let it fall.

Thoughts of that garrotte flashed through his mind. He ran his fingers through her wet, silky hair, trying to intuit the tricks a naked female assassin might use to conceal the tools of her trade.

Her hair was amazingly thick and soft. No garrotte wire in it.

She shivered at his touch. No earrings, rings, necklaces, anklets, bracelets, toe rings. She made a wordless protest as he ran his hands over the deep curve of her waist, up her back. Nothing taped up there. Then he moved between those soft thighs, another popular place of concealment. That provoked a squawk of outrage and a furious wriggle. He ignored both.

Nick brushed the edge of his hands up under her tits, which were more than full enough to conceal something taped or tucked up there. Nothing. They were amazingly soft, though. Wow.

He checked them again, just to be thorough. Hmm. That left bodily orifices, but that could wait. Hell, he barely knew the chick.

She flinched at his snort of laughter. “What’s so funny?” she snapped. “Are you done groping me yet, you disgusting pig?”

“Not yet,” he said mildly. He grabbed the towel and started briskly drying her body.

She tried to twist away, sputtering. “Do you mind?”

“Not at all,” he replied. He flung the towel away, ran his eyes over her. She was mostly dry and her lips had more color. Down to business.

“Let’s talk, Becca Cattrell,” he said. “Tell me all about Marla.”

“I-I-I work with her. At the club.” She got points for consistency.

“OK,” he said. “The club. That’s a good place to start. Tell me all about this club, beautiful. Who runs it?”

“Ah, well, the CEO, I guess. James Blaystock the Fourth. It’s the Cardinal Creek Country Club in Bothell. I’m the events coordinator. I arrange meetings, banquets, parties. Weddings.”

Nick’s mental processes flash-froze. He just stared at her. Country club? What in the flying fuck…?

“Marla is my boss,” she babbled. “Marla Matlock. She was the one who gave me the keys to Jerome Sloane’s—he’s her boyfriend—vacation home. It’s the big A-frame on the hill. She told me she’d been coming here to swim for years. She said the owner was a harmless sort of guy—” She faltered. “I take it he’s…not you, right?”

Nick cleared his throat as the possible scenarios morphed into new, even less welcome shapes. “No. He’s definitely not me. This house changed owners recently. A few weeks ago.”

She nodded. “I see. P-p-please,” she whispered. “Let me go.”

Nick crossed his arms over his chest. She could still be lying but Sloane was the name of the guy who owned the nearest house. Nick had a file on him. Jerome Sloane was a rich art dealer in his fifties, who divided his time between Seattle and San Francisco. He had files for the owners of all the other properties on the small island as well. Sloane had left Frakes Island the second week of August and he hadn’t been back.

Plausible cover story, the voice in his head whispered. Anyone else could have done the same research that he had done.

“OK,” he said. “Let’s assume, for a second, that this is true—”

“It is true! I swear, I never meant to—”

“Shut up.” He gave her a thin smile. “Assuming that it’s true, explain to me what you’re doing here in April. And more specifically, explain what the fuck you were doing trespassing stark naked, waking me out of a sound sleep and scaring the living shit out of me at—” He checked his watch. “12:40 A.M.”

Her eyelashes fluttered. “I?” she asked delicately. “Scared you?”

“Explain,” he growled. “And you’d better make it convincing.”

She let out a shuddering breath. “I, um, had some p-p-personal problems lately. I wanted to, you know, to get away from it all. Marla persuaded Jerome to give me the keys to his island house. She told me about your beautiful pool. I just didn’t think. She said nobody would mind. I guess she was, um, wrong.”

He processed that. In point of fact, he had not yet had time to rig up the security system for the poolhouse, just the video. His beeper had gone off when she tripped the infrared set up at the perimeter.

This sucked. His chances of living through Zhoglo’s impending visit were slim enough without involving clueless innocent bimbos who organized weddings and banquets. “Do you trespass naked often?” he asked, genuinely curious.

Dark, curling lashes swept down over enormous leaf-green eyes. She had a dusting of freckles on her nose. Concentrate, damn it.

“No,” she whispered. “I’ve never done anything like this in my life. It was, um, an exercise. I’m trying to be—I want to be more, ah, adventurous.”

Adventurous? He stared at her. His lips twitched. His cock lengthened. Hell, he’d show her adventure. A hot, sweaty adventure that she’d never forget. Left, right, sideways, upside down, inside out.

No, he wouldn’t. “Adventurous?” he repeated.

She shrugged as best she could. “I know it sounds stupid. But I’ve always been a good girl.” The rest of her explanation came faster. “I brushed my teeth, I did my homework, I took my vitamins, I worked hard, I put myself last…I guess that’s why my fiancé thought I’d make such a good politician’s wife—”

“Fiancé?” He came down on the word, like shark j. . .