the team had put into place since they had arrived on the island.
He wasn’t surprised that the business was doing well. She was a hell of a businesswoman—competent, resourceful, dedicated. He knew as much from her file. She had a fine track record with Pellegrino’s, the company she had built from nothing before she had succumbed to temptation and neatly made four million dollars disappear. “And the other end of the business?” He was referring to the money laundering they did on the sly in order to get closer to a shadier clientele that could provide valuable leads to Tsernyakov.
“I wish things would roll faster,” she said. “I was hoping to make contact with Cavanaugh tonight.”
“Got sidetracked?” He drew up an eyebrow.
She shifted in her seat, but wouldn’t look away. Good, the woman had chutzpah. She would need it on this mission.
“I was doing surveillance,” she said.
So she was using the poor bastard. How far would she have been willing to go? He thought of her shoes discarded on the marble floor. “Is that what they’re calling it these days?”
“I was trying to listen in on Cavanaugh’s meeting next door.”
“Find out anything?”
“Very little before I was interrupted. Cavanaugh is in some kind of a real-estate deal. He and a couple of friends of his are trying to rezone an area for building. They mentioned environmental setbacks and the possibility of losing a lot of money.”
“They?”
She shook her head. “Don’t have names. And I only saw one, other than Cavanaugh.”
“Got pictures?”
“Not a good one. But I have pictures of others Cavanaugh had been talking to earlier in the evening.”
“And your companion?”
“Michael Lambert, land developer.”
“What are your plans with him?”
She looked like she would have liked to say, none of your business, but said instead, “None. I have no plans for him at all. He followed me when I followed Cavanaugh.”
“Is he linked to him?”
“I don’t know. Yet.”
He nodded. “Find out.” She obviously had no problem with cozying up to the guy. And Lambert had wanted badly whatever she’d been offering. Brant had seen the flash of anger and disappointment in the man’s eyes when he had walked in and interrupted.
Was Anita looking for suspects, links to Cavanaugh and Tsernyakov, or was she looking for allies for her own purposes? Lambert had money, you could tell by looking at him. And with money came influence. Was Anita working him? Sure looked like it from where he was standing.
He didn’t trust her, didn’t trust any of the women, had argued against the mission and lost. He had accepted the assignment of working with the team—somebody with realistic expectations had to be involved—but he still thought it was nothing but an invitation to disaster.
You wanted to know how someone would act in the future, you looked at how he or she had acted in the past. By and large, past behavior predicted future behavior. What the hell were they doing conducting a mission based on criminals?
The way he’d seen Anita play Lambert tonight had left a bad taste in his mouth, an odd reaction since that was exactly what she’d been recruited for. And she had been good, he had to give her that. She had looked the part of a woman about to be seduced.
Anita, more so than the others, bore watching. She was the most beautiful of the four women on the team—dark hair, nearly black, cascading to her waist, the body of a dancer, legs that could mesmerize anyone. He was a sucker for high heels and she worked them like nobody he’d ever known. She was a lethal weapon even when armed with nothing but a smile. And he would just bet she was smart enough to know how to use what she had.
In addition to her intimate knowledge of financial wizardry, those looks had been responsible for getting her involved in the mission. He had picked her himself, from the list of possible candidates.
His attention lingered on her full lips, annoyed as the picture of Michael Lambert kissing her popped into his mind. What did he care?
Then all of a sudden his instincts prickled and he turned his focus to the rest of the room, scanning the tables one by one. Nobody was paying them special attention. Maybe he was just too tired and out of sorts. Still, he had learned to appreciate intuition over the years.
“How about if we have our food wrapped and take it back to my hotel?” he asked, unable to shake the feeling that they were being watched.
“What’s wrong with here?” She didn’t look comfortable with the suggestion.
He glanced around surreptitiously as he took a drink, and from the corner of his eye caught a dark shape at the window, the glint of metal. Instinct honed by years of conflicts in the field pushed him forward. He registered the surprised expression on Anita’s face as he took her down, protecting her, softening her fall.
At the same time, the bottle of mineral water that had a split second ago been in front of her exploded all over their table, showering them with shards of glass from above.
Chapter Two
A woman screamed as people all around ducked for cover. With four years of federal prison and an intensive FBI crash course behind her, Anita managed to stay reasonably calm as she kept her head down.
“Unarmed?” Brant poked his head out, trying to see.
“Sorry.” She had thought about bringing her gun to the Chamber of Commerce reception, but there hadn’t been room to hide it under her slinky dress and her evening bag was barely sufficient to hold her cell phone, a tube of lipstick and the stack of business cards she had collected during the evening. She’d gone to the party to make connections, not to engage in a gunfight. She hadn’t thought the weapon would be necessary.
He didn’t chastise her for the lapse, but pushed her forward. “Let’s go. Toward the kitchen.”
All for getting out of there, she crawled under the tables among people who looked stunned, scared and confused. Spilled food and broken plates littered her path—a few tablecloths had been pulled down in the panic of the moment as people reacted on reflex.
Whispers came from everywhere, punctuated by a few sobs and some swearing. “Where did it come from?” “Is the shooter in here?” “Stay still.”
“Stop moving around. You’ll draw attention,” an older gentleman snapped as Anita pushed by him, then fell silent as he looked at Brant behind her.
She nudged the swinging door open and slipped through into the hot and humid air of the kitchen, which smelled of frying onions and burning oil. She didn’t rise until the metal door was closed behind them and even then she stayed in a crouch.
“This way.” Brant headed to the back.
The
