presently calling herself Tamara Steele had never shown herself to be anything but ruthlessly efficient in the past.
He let out a sigh, acknowledging defeat, and got up, bending his knees and shaking his bare feet to get blood moving. He snapped his fingers under the sound-sensitive lamp, illuminating the hotel suite. Val padded silently into the kitchenette and pressed the hot spigot of the water machine over his cup to brew a cup of smoky Lapsang Souchong tea. It occurred to him as he fished the tea bag out that he’d bought the same brand as he had last week, having liked it. The detail was seemingly banal, but lapses like these could kill a man.
He had to stay rigorous. He should have bought coffee, fruit juice, Red Bull. Anything else. No habits. It was one of the first lessons he’d learned as an operative. Habits were deadly. They soon became needs. An operative could not afford needs or even preferences. He had to be a blank slate, ready to be anyone, anything. Light and empty, flexible as a gymnast. Ready to jump in any direction. Imre’s training helped.
But Imre had never meant for him to be a man made out of blank paper and cardboard. An empty man who could call nothing his own.
He breathed in fragrant steam, feeling oddly rebellious. So he was getting sloppy, but no one was watching. He was just a fly on the wall in the ass end of nowhere, watching Steele play with her new daughter, and inexplicably fascinated by it. If not for the fact that she would almost certainly kill him if she knew what PSS wanted from her, and that he might be required to abduct either her or her little daughter, he might almost have been enjoying himself.
That was the most alarming development of all.
Detach, he reminded himself. The woman was deadly dangerous. Some years ago, Steele had become involved with Kurt Novak, Daddy Novak’s son and heir to his mafiya empire. During that period, which had led up to Kurt Novak’s spectacular and theatrical death, Georg Luksch, Kurt’s lieutenant, had developed a burning obsession for her.
Steele had not returned his regard. In fact, she had vanished like smoke on that bloody day and had shown no desire to be found.
Val had found her, but now he wished he had not. He didn’t want to deliver her to Luksch, who was at best a criminal grown rich by trafficking in drugs, humans, and everything else, and at worst, a psychotic freak. But PSS was not inclined to criticize a client so immensely rich.
Val carried the cup back to the laptop glowing in the middle of the wood floor and sank down in front of it. His naked chest was covered with goosebumps, but the tea would warm him, and he didn’t want to bother finding a shirt or turning on the heat.
He clicked the footage he’d obtained yesterday. The toddler’s swim class. He took a sip of the hot, bitter tea and skipped through the footage to his favorite part. Here he was again, allowing himself to have favorites. Like the tea. An uncharacteristic indulgence.
From one moment to the next, it would distort into a need. And from that, an obsession. He had always wondered what an obsession would feel like. It would seem that he no longer had to wonder.
She came out of the women’s dressing room, silent and graceful as a slant-eyed female panther among the crowd of chubby, chattering women with their squealing offspring. She led the wobbly-legged, huge-eyed little girl carefully by the hand.
Her body was stunning in the black maillot. He always watched the exit from the dressing room, having grown addicted to the hot rush of delighted surprise that it gave him no matter how many times he saw it. He skipped through the class, which he had already watched ad nauseam, to the moment that she lifted the dripping child out of the water and vaulted out in turn onto the pool’s edge, poised in the perfect equilibrium of a predator’s crouch. The curves and hollows, the highlights and shadows of her wet body. High, lush breasts, the discreet mandolin curve of hips and ass. Endlessly long, strong, shapely legs.
He’d seduced many women in his career, and some of them had been very beautiful, but he’d never reacted like this to mere visual stimuli. Or any stimuli, in truth, visual or otherwise. He liked sex, but he took his usual three steps back from it—particularly in the context of a professional operation. From the beginning of his career with PSS, they had required him to use his looks and body as a means to an end. His sexual technique was flawless, but he stayed cool. Always.
So why was he sweating now? Panting like a hormone-intoxicated teenager? There was no logical explanation. And no excuse.
The thought of that woman soiling herself with that prick Georg Luksch made his hands clench. It made his gorge rise. A bad sign.
Ah, here it was, the best part. The women’s changing room. He had seen a hiding place for the tiny camera behind the fluorescent light fixture in the shower area the night he’d broken into the place. He’d been unable to resist. After all, a long look at the target’s naked body could yield useful data.
Ah, no. Unfortunately, he was not as adept at lying to himself as he was at lying to the rest of the world.
That footage was incredible, though. High breasts, water coursing around her taut, protruding brown nipples as she soaped herself. The child was wrapped in a towel after her own bath, playing with a rubber frog, unaware of her mother’s nudity. Tamara rinsed. The suds sluiced into the minuscule swatch of decorative pubic hair over the smooth, depilated cunt, filling the alluring hollows of her groin.
Steele ignored the other women in the room, who sneaked slack-jawed peeks at a body the likes of which they’d only seen in their husbands’ airbrushed men’s magazines.
His cell phone rang. Val was savagely irritated at the interruption, and yanked off the earpiece clipped to his waistband.
He hung it on his ear. “What?” he asked, with ill grace.
“So?” It was Hegel, his direct superior at PSS, the man who had recruited and trained him. The tone in the man’s voice put Val’s teeth on edge. Tough. Resentment was another thing that he could not afford.
“So what?” Val countered.
“It’s two weeks since you located her. The fat cats are breathing down my neck. Stop sitting on this thing like a fucking hen. Have you got the kid yet?”
Val’s jaw tensed. “That is not the correct approach.”
“It’s quick,” Hegel said. “We need results.”
Val was silent for a moment. “I cannot be sure that she even cares enough about the child for her to be an effective lever,” he said. “I’d prefer to try a subtler approach first.”
“Subtle. Hah.” Hegel made a doglike growling sound. “Come on, Janos. One of Daddy Novak’s ex-thugs should be more professional. What is your brilliant alternative plan? Knock her on the head and put her in a box? That works for me, as long as you do it soon.”
Val clenched his jaw. Three steps back. Hegel loved waving Val’s old connection to Novak’s organization in his face, but it could only irritate him if he allowed it to. “I’m working on it,” he said finally.
“Hmmph. Work harder, Janos. I hope you’re not having an attack of scruples about the kid. That was what fucked up your performance last time. Patience is growing thin up here. Damn, I should have called Henry for this job. He would have been done and gone by now.”
Val was stonily silent. Hegel liked to sow discord, believing that a situation that he had destabilized himself was more easily controlled. But Hegel could not control
