flashed her one of his mind-melting smiles as he nodded. “No worries there.”
Her eyes went wide. David Moretti had a twin. Two of him. Like one wasn’t overwhelming enough.
“So this brother of yours, he’s the rough-and- tough type?” Gina asked. “If he’s going with Sam, he’d better be able to provide protection.”
“He is a professional bodyguard,” Brant cut in. “He’s somewhat of a wild card from what I understand.”
David didn’t respond. His eyes were becoming somber, although the ever-present smile never faltered on his face.
“Sounds like a good alternative,” Anita said with caution. “I think it would be smart for Sam not to go alone.”
She didn’t mean it disparagingly, as if Sam wasn’t capable. Anita was simply the mothering type. She couldn’t help being concerned about others’ safety. It no longer bothered Sam. God knew, she had a serious deficiency when it came to being mothered. Still, she didn’t want to look as if she were scared of the mission, especially not in front of the others. She wasn’t ready to let them see any of the chinks in her armor. You showed weakness and the world steamrolled right on over you. It was a lesson she had learned well on the street.
“It’s a beach party. I’ll get a tan, check out the house, draw some blueprints, eavesdrop if I can. What can go wrong?” She shrugged as if her scalp weren’t tingling from nerves. “I can do it.” She didn’t feel nearly as sure as she sounded, but what was the alternative? Have the others figure out what a screwup she was, kick her off the team and send her back to the can?
“You can if you need to,” Brant said, apparently buying her bravado. “But it looks like we are getting a chance to put in a second man. It’s a freebie, a bonus. He could watch your back. You could go further, get more information.”
“I shouldn’t have introduced David by his real name.” Sam shook her head. She’d been kicking herself for that ever since. But who could think standing next to David Moretti?
“That was probably a good move actually,” Brant said. “Cavanaugh will have him investigated prior to the party. He wouldn’t let a complete stranger inside his compound. If he caught us in a lie, it would jeopardize the whole operation.”
A moment of silence passed, then Carly turned to David. “You think your brother could handle this?”
“He could, but he won’t. It’s not what he does. He escorts businessmen in politically unstable areas. He navigates the hot spots, retrieves kidnap victims, that kind of thing.” He hesitated.
“And?” Brant was asking. “This is not about preferences.” He paused for a moment. “I just received the latest report an hour ago, didn’t want to mention it until I had a chance for another look and a more careful analysis, but there is so much bustle in terrorist circles, the lines are glowing. Monies are moving, human resources are being re-shuffled. We’ve never seen this much activity.” He paused again. “Not even before 9/11.”
“Something major is about to go down,” Nick picked up where Brant had left off. “Since Tsernyakov rules the illegal-weapons market, chances are he’s in on it. If we can get to him, we might be able to stop whatever is about to happen.”
And Cavanaugh was their only link to Tsernyakov. Cavanaugh, who had just invited her to spend a week at his house. Everything rode on her. Odd doubts surfaced, one after the other. What if she wasn’t equal to the task?
At the beginning, she had taken the deal without much thought because it got her out of prison, and to show them all that she wasn’t scared of anything. But as she’d gotten to know the others over the past months, it was becoming more and more important not to let them down. She wanted to get Tsernyakov, for the team, and for herself, too, to prove that she could do something right for once.
“So, David, how about Reese?” Brant asked. “Without telling him everything, of course. Strictly on a need-to-know basis.”
“I’ll attempt to persuade him. However, the last time I requested a favor from him it turned out rather unfavorably. He was guarding one of my clients prior to court testimony and she allegedly shot him in the back. I don’t believe I can convince him to discard whatever he’s working on to come and bail me out again.”
“What’s a bullet in the back between brothers?” Gina joked.
David shook his head. “His exact words were, Never again. You don’t even have to ask.”
THERE WAS a wide-eyed wildness under her polite veneer. He wouldn’t have minded being the one who tamed her and broke her in. All four women at Savall, Ltd. were stunning—a superb combination with their lack of moral sensibility that was guaranteed by their records, ex-cons the lot of them. Their business was growing by leaps and bounds.
Samantha had something special about her that made her stand out from the others, however, and it wouldn’t let him rest, had grabbed him from the beginning. She had such an abundance of nervous energy humming through her. She was forever in motion.
Cavanaugh sat behind his desk and pictured harnessing Samantha Hanley’s energies for his own purposes. He didn’t care about the guy she’d been with. If anything, he added to the challenge. Rivals didn’t scare him, inside or outside of business.
Moretti was her lover at the moment, he was pretty sure. He’d picked up on some odd vibes between the two. They had that look of the guilty, especially Samantha, of people caught at something they shouldn’t have been doing.
He was an attorney. A crooked one if he was close to the women. Cavanaugh would bet a kilo of the best cheese he had flown in from Paris that morning that Moretti was in on the money laundering.
Everyone could always use another shady lawyer. Moretti could come in handy yet. He didn’t need to know if Samantha made a few detours to the party host’s bed.
And she would, Cavanaugh was pretty sure of that. Women always gravitated to the most powerful man in any group. It was part of their genetic conditioning, part of the primal program that ran in their DNA. A splendid bit of biology he regularly took advantage of.
“Last van just left,” Roberto said as he came through the door. Without knocking.
Cavanaugh shrugged off the moment of annoyance. The man was all brawn but little social sensibility. Any attempt to teach him the finer points of polite behavior and manners were a waste of energy. “Good. Make sure the place is cleaned up. We have visitors coming.”
“Sure, boss.”
“Anything else?”
“That’s it.”
“I’m ready for my lunch to be sent up,” he said and the man disappeared the next second—miracle of miracles, closing the door behind him.
He signed into one of his many bank accounts he kept under assumed names and filled out the online form to wire money to one of the many front businesses that, in a convoluted way, belonged to Tsernyakov. That one could be dangerous if he didn’t get his full cut of the business and on time. People in his organization who didn’t perform to expectations tended to disappear.
A few clicks on the keyboard concluded that business.
