sea-green eyes of the woman holding the door were exactly the same as they had been in the photos—clear and very direct. Her hair was dark, almost black, but the strong sun of the area where she lived had gilded highlights along its entire length. She wore it shoulder length, as straight as she had during her years in college.
Her face, becomingly tanned, was devoid of makeup. The freckles, although fainter, were still visible across the bridge of a rather high-arched, patrician nose.
“My name is Ethan Snow,” he said, watching the small furrow form between her brows as she realized it meant nothing to her. “We have a mutual friend who thought you might be willing to be of some assistance—”
The furrow disappeared as her mouth tightened. “Whoever sent you was mistaken. I don’t do that anymore.”
She stepped back. Her hand, which had never released the knob, began to push the door forward.
Six months of frustration as well as the events of the last forty-eight hours fueled Ethan’s anger. He’d be damned if he’d come all this way and not even get an opportunity to tell her why. He put his left forearm against the door, his fingers wrapping around the edge to keep it from moving.
Shocked, she looked up, straight into his eyes. Her pupils had dilated, expanding rapidly into the rim of color. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“All you have to do is listen,” he said, still holding the door. “If you want to say no after that, fine. But not until.”
“You’ve been misinformed.” Her voice was softer, free of the shock and indignation he’d just heard in her question. It sounded more regretful than angry. Or resigned. At least when she added, “I really can’t help you.”
“You don’t even know what I want.”
“It doesn’t matter. Whatever it is, I can’t do it.”
Again she pushed against the door, attempting to close it. Ethan didn’t remove his arm. Nor did he step back.
“Ten minutes,” he said.
He was tired. He was hungry. And given the events of the last two days, there was no way in hell he was going to get in the jet and head back to D.C. without at least finding out why Monty Gardner had given him this woman’s name.
Raine McAllister didn’t look like any intelligence operative he’d ever met. And she certainly didn’t look like a Beltway insider. Not in those skin-tight cutoffs and a tank top.
Even before he and Griff had talked to the old man, however, Ethan had reached the end of his resources. Now, after what had happened last night, he was even more convinced than he had been then that The Covenant was too dangerous to allow him to give up on this investigation.
“Whatever you’re here for,” Raine McAllister said, “whoever sent you, I really can’t help you.”
She had stopped pushing against the door with her slender strength. She simply stood there, her eyes holding his, her face as empty of expression as her voice had been of emotion.
“Montgomery Gardner.”
Before he had completed the enunciation of the last name, her face changed. Then, exactly as the old man’s had two nights ago, her eyes seemed to focus on something other than the present. After perhaps five seconds, she closed her mouth, pressing her lips together before she stepped back, opening the door wide enough for Ethan to step through.
Chapter Two
“Exactly what does Mr. Gardner think I can do for you?”
After directing him to the couch, Raine McAllister had perched on an ottoman that belonged to one of the two tall fan chairs in the sunroom she’d led him to. Although there was no ocean view from here, the atmosphere created by white wicker furniture, with its pale-green and yellow cushions, left no doubt this was a beach house.
The room was both elegant and comfortable. During the day, it would be full of light from the floor-to-ceiling windows. Tonight their jalousies had been closed against the darkness, but with the woodwork painted white and the walls a nearly colorless shell pink, the effect was still spacious and airy.
“I’m trying to gather information about The Covenant.”
There was a heartbeat of silence. Ethan wasn’t sure if that was because she didn’t recognize the name or because she was reluctant to reveal to a stranger that she knew anything about the organization.
Given the cloak of secrecy that shrouded The Covenant’s operations and considering how dangerous he believed the group to be, either was a possibility. He was hopeful, of course, that the latter of the two explanations was the one that made her hesitate.
“That’s why he sent you? To find out if I can provide you with information about… I’m sorry. What was it? A covenant?”
Despite what the old man had implied, Raine McAllister seemed genuinely puzzled by the reference. The sinking feeling in the pit of Ethan’s stomach reflected his disappointment.
“The Covenant,” Ethan corrected. “He gave me your name and address and indicated you might be able to help with an ongoing investigation that otherwise, quite frankly, seems to have reached a dead end.”
“So…Mr. Gardner sent you here for my help, but he didn’t tell you how or why I might be able to give it? And you didn’t ask.”
He couldn’t quite read her tone. Bemused, perhaps? Or maybe amused, he amended. Because he’d come all the way down here from Washington based only on an old man’s recommendation that she might be able to help him?
At the same time he was aware that he’d been let in only because he’d invoked the name of Montgomery Gardner. He didn’t want to destroy whatever advantage that had given him by saying something that could be construed as derogatory about the old man. Not before he was sure this really was the wild-goose chase he was beginning to believe it might be.
“Since Mr. Gardner is both a former DCI and a lifelong resident of the D.C. area, when he suggested I talk to you, I assumed you had either worked at the agency or had some specialized knowledge that he believed might be useful.”
There was a moment’s hesitation, as she appeared to think about what he’d just said.
“I suppose in a way I did work for him. I guess I just never looked at it like that.”
“You didn’t consider what you did at the agency work?”
Even as he posed the question, he was trying to figure out how this woman could have worked for Monty Gardner, whose tenure at the CIA had ended almost twenty-five years ago. He would have guessed her to be in her late twenties. Early thirties at the outside. In either case, she would have been far too young to have been an operative during the old man’s regime.
“As far as I was concerned, we played games.”
“Games?”
“They’d point to some place on a map, and I’d describe to them what was there.”
Suddenly everything he hadn’t
