saving all who were around her. But Sam had always resisted even the simplest hug. She didn’t trust women any more than men. Her own mother had taken off and left her with Buck at the end.
“I’m here to help you,” Reese said.
“I know.” She drew a deep breath and suddenly felt her eyes burning. What was wrong with her?
“You’re nervous about tomorrow?” He pulled back a little. “What if I kissed your forehead?” But he didn’t move.
A second or two passed before she realized he was waiting for permission.
“Okay.”
His eyes were full of encouragement as he leaned over and pressed his lips above her eyebrow. He stayed there for a second before pulling away.
“See? It’s not that difficult. You just have to trust me.”
He was asking the impossible.
“I’ll try,” she said anyway. “Don’t take it personally. It’s—”
“Don’t worry about it. I know,” he said.
And from the look on his face she got a feeling that he really did. “How?”
“My job is to bring people back. Go up against rebels, bandits, whomever. I’ve done a few pseudo religious sects and gangs, too, over the years. I’ve seen both men and women who’d gone through hell before we got to them.”
They stood in silence for a while as she tried to picture the kind of work he did, the danger of it. The idea that he would do that for strangers was stunning. When she’d lived on the streets, every day she prayed for safety. She’d done dangerous things, but only out of necessity. At the end, prison had been a relief.
And look where she’d ended up now.
What if joining this mission was the worst decision she’d made yet? What if she messed up and let them all down? What if all she ended up proving, to herself and the others, was that she was a lost cause?
“How about if we just watch some TV?” he asked after a while. “You can sit by me and we’ll hold hands. You can put your head on my shoulder when you get comfortable.”
She nodded and sat.
He plopped down next to her and took her hand. “We can’t have you jump and look ready to run every time we brush up against each other.”
“I know. I can do this.” She didn’t want him to think she was a total incompetent idiot who was unsuitable for the mission.
“I know you can. Just relax.”
It helped that he was doing just that, leaning back and surfing through the channels as if he were in his own living room—wherever he lived when he wasn’t sleeping in the bush.
He settled on the National Geographic Channel. “Okay with you?”
“Sure.” She watched an interview with a woman who took in orphaned lion cubs.
They were cute feeding from a bottle. She let her tightly wound muscles loosen up a little. The cubs grew and needed to be taught to hunt. That took a while. Life was a learning experience for everyone, everywhere. Sam made herself lean against the man next to her, conscious of their bodies touching, not the least comfortable, but making herself do it all the same. If she could learn to pretend, she would be happy with that.
She didn’t think she could ever forget enough to have the real thing, to be able to relax around a man.
TSERNYAKOV GLANCED at his timetable and ticked off another task done. Next was calling in all debts people owed him. If they didn’t pay now, they sure as hell wouldn’t be able to pay next month this time. The clock was ticking.
He needed all that he could get his hands on, and not just the many currencies he did business in. After the terrorist attack, as economies collapsed, inflation was likely to soar. Whoever couldn’t pay up, he would persuade to substitute hard cash with land, equipment, gold, anything potentially valuable.
He looked at his mile-long to do list, resenting that he had to handle all the work when he employed thousands. But this was information he couldn’t trust to anyone.
COME ON, SAM. Where are you? Reese glanced toward the main house while keeping a smile on his face and his full attention, seemingly, on the blonde in front of him. The beach party was a lot smaller than they had expected. They’d figured over a hundred people. There were only about thirty, scattered in small groups on the sand.
“So what more could I do to avoid taxes?” Eva Hern didn’t bat her eyes, but made long, sweeping moves with her eyelashes, many of which were the glue-on kind.
Who wore fake eyelashes to the beach? And for heaven’s sake, why? He tried not to look at the little clumps of adhesive on her eyelids. Maybe he was out of step with fashion. He had no time to socialize.
“You could give all your money to charity,” he said smoothly.
They both laughed. Then he did his best to give an answer like his brother, David, the attorney whom he was impersonating, would. “I can’t really tell you anything without looking at your particular situation. I’d be happy to get together with you sometime next week in your office to chat about this.”
Judging from the woman’s widening smile, he’d given the right answer.
“I’ll call you. Definitely,” she said and wiggled her shoulders. She swam topless like most of the female guests, but had put on a see-through beach shirt when she’d decided to come over and chat him up.
He made a point not to look below her eyes. It seemed to disappoint and frustrate her enough to keep her constantly moving, from pose to pose.
He glanced at his watch. Sam had been gone for twenty minutes.
Too long.
She was supposed to get in and out as fast as she could. The plan was for her to take pictures of the Cavanaugh mansion’s back entry and kitchen with the micro camera she wore disguised as a large ring. She was pretending to be searching for a bottle of mineral water as they were out of “gentle” at the grass-hut bar outside.
Another thing he had missed somehow, that mineral water now came in three varieties: still (pink cap), carbonated (blue cap) and gently carbonated (green cap)—some weird stuff Cavanaugh had apparently brought in from Europe. He thought of all those times when he and his men had drunk from puddles in the jungle or sucked moisture out of roots in the desert. Different worlds for sure.
“How long are you staying on the island?” Eva was asking.
“Maybe another week,” he said. He certainly had enough work to get back to.
Except for Sam, who’d turned out to be okay, he couldn’t wait to be rid of this job. Going into an operation without a gun left him unsettled. They were armed only with a cell phone and a “secret weapon” that had come from one of the men on his team, Tony Ferrarella, who, in between missions, spent a lot of time in his lab, exercising his inventor genius. The can was a prototype, only with Reese by chance when he’d gotten
