Loe raamatut: «My Bodyguard»

My Bodyguard
Dana Marton

www.millsandboon.co.uk

With many thanks to Allison Lyons, Maggie Scillia and

Monica Reider for all their support and generous help.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Prologue

Quantico, Virginia

FBI agent Brant Law pointed to the screen that showed the dark outline of a man’s profile. “Your target is someone who has managed to elude law enforcement for the last twenty years. He has no known picture. We haven’t been able to narrow his location to as much as a country. We don’t know his first name, or exactly how old he is.”

David Moretti, the team’s gorgeous lawyer, and Nick Tarasov, the commando guy who had seen to the four women’s training at Quantico, flanked him on either side.

Samantha Hanley watched the men with distrust, much like the three other women sitting around her.

In exchange for signing up for a top-secret mission, they were let out of Brighton Federal Correctional Institute. If they succeeded, their sentences would be canceled and their records cleared. She didn’t expect much to come of it—her luck didn’t usually work that way—but she’d been willing to take the risk.

Got her out of that cell, didn’t it?

“So what do you know?” Gina Torno, the excop who’d slipped and killed a man, spoke up.

“We know him as Tsernyakov. But we’re not sure if that’s his real name. He is one of the biggest illegal-weapons dealers in the world. We suspect he might have had some position in the old communist government in the USSR, might have been in the military—his access to large amounts of decommissioned weaponry points that way. He has ‘ears’ in every branch of law enforcement of just about every country. He has unlimited access to money. He is ruthless. If he thinks someone crossed him, he doesn’t wait for proof. He kills on first suspicion.”

“You want us to do what? Take him out?” Gina asked.

The air stuck in Sam’s lungs, the question making her realize what a small-timer, a thief that’s all, she was compared to some of the other women.

But Law said, “Getting a location on him would be enough.”

And she let herself relax a little.

The questions and answers flew back and forth.

“Your cover will be a consulting company that facilitates entrepreneurs in setting up small businesses. Miss Caballo will handle accounting, Miss Jones will do IT, Miss Torno will take care of security, including background checks on employees and Miss Hanley is the support person for the team.”

“I’m the freakin’ secretary? No way.” So what if she’d come from the streets? It didn’t mean the rest were better.

“You’re an undercover agent in a top-secret operation.” Law appeared sincere.

Didn’t sound that horrid when he put it like that. If she didn’t like how things unfolded, she could always take off. They would never find her. She was good at running.

Law showed them another slide, mission statement and other information on their made-up company.

“What else do you want us to do? A start-up consulting outfit isn’t going to attract much attention from the type Tsernyakov would hang with,” Gina challenged him again.

“Correct. Savall, Ltd. is your cover. What you’ll really be involved in is money laundering.”

“Are you asking us to engage in illegal activities?” Anita looked as stunned and morally outraged as a Girl Scout asked to kick puppies. A good actress, that one.

“You need to move in the same circles Tsernyakov’s associates move in. You’re authorized by the FBI and CIA to use any means necessary to get close to the man.”

Sam tugged at the silver rings in her eyebrow.

“This is not gonna come back to bite us, no matter what?” Gina asked.

“Correct.”

“You need us, people with authentic backgrounds instead of existing agents, because if we get lucky enough to catch this guy’s attention he’ll have us checked out and he knows people in the right places.” Gina kept pushing.

“Yes.”

“I’m guessing something like this would be a last-ditch effort. You tried before with your own men and didn’t succeed. Did he have them killed?” Gina shot back again.

“We lost a number of operatives.” Law moved on to the next slide, an explanation on what Savall, Ltd. did and the business in general.

“Miss Caballo was convicted for the embezzlement of nearly four million dollars that was never recovered. Your operations will imply that she had that money safely stashed away, met up with the rest of you in prison and decided to start a company that would grow her nest egg outside the United States.”

Way to go. Sam grinned at Anita, who was looking at Law with a tight-lipped expression.

“So what’s going to keep us from taking off once you cut us loose?”

Gina’s question claimed Sam’s full attention. This she wanted to hear.

“You’ll be under constant surveillance. For your own safety.” Law indicated Tarasov.

Commando-guy was going to babysit? Well, that was his burden. He was good, but he hadn’t seen Sam in action yet. She had evaded drunks and druggies and gangs and cops for too many years on the street to be held down by anyone.

“Any questions about this part?” Law asked.

Anita raised her hand. Raised her hand. Like, where were they, in middle school? She had to be faking all that ladylike respect for authority. Anyone who’d made off with four million couldn’t really be like that. “Has anyone managed to get close to this man and come back alive?”

The FBI agent looked at Moretti and Tarasov before addressing the women. “None so far,” he said.

Sam stared into the sudden silence in the room.

Either this was a chance to start over, or the biggest mistake she’d ever made in her life. And yet she was desperate to give it a try. Because she did want to start over. She was scared to death of always being thought of as a former street kid turned petty criminal. Would society ever let her climb out of that box?

And the most terrifying question of all: what if they did and she wasn’t capable?

Chapter One

Georgetown, Grand Cayman Island, three months later

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Sam Hanley said, standing by her desk in the middle of Savall, Ltd.’s office on Grand Cayman Island with David, Anita, Gina and Carly around her. “I don’t mind going alone.”

Going undercover at a week-long beach party at the closely guarded compound of a known criminal sounded scary, sure, but she was forever falling over her own feet near David Moretti and his mile-wide charisma. If she slipped at Cavanaugh’s, she could mess up everything. It would be better to go alone and be able to focus.

“Let’s keep in mind that David is an attorney and has no training for a situation like this,” Brant Law said over the speaker. “Cavanaugh is the only link to Tsernyakov that we’ve been able to turn up. There is no margin for error.”

He was patched in via phone, along with Nick Tarasov. Now that they were getting close to their target, the men had stepped back and were careful not to show themselves in the company of the four women. No sense arousing any suspicions and risk blowing their cover.

“David’s not the rough-and-tough type,” Nick said. “No offense.”

“None taken. I’m smooth. That’s what I do.” David smiled, clearly at ease with who he was and wasn’t, a trait Sam envied.

“Since Cavanaugh thinks David is your boyfriend, you two better be convincing.” Gina gave Sam an amused glance.

Hey, it could happen. In an alternate universe. Sam flashed back a defensive look, knowing David was miles out of her league.

Though Cavanaugh wasn’t supposed to meet David at all, they had run into him the day before and introductions had been unavoidable. So they’d been nervous, acting frazzled, and the man had thought they’d been coming from a lunchtime tryst, assuming they were romantically linked. And they hadn’t corrected him, because they had no better explanation handy.

Dark hair, sharp gray eyes, great smile—David had style, big-time, and he carried himself like a movie star, plenty of sex appeal rounding out the picture. He wore a dark suit despite the heat, some light wonder of silk. A man like him wouldn’t have given her the time of day under normal circumstances. Not that it mattered much. David was off-limits anyway. He had some supermodel wife and not the brainless kind, either, one of the better-known ones, co-owner of some posh NYC restaurant—a depressing piece of information she’d overheard from Brant Law.

You shouldn’t ever feel inferior, not to anyone. Sam drew herself tall. Anita had told her that. Maybe someday she would start to believe it.

Sick as it sounded, David’s inaccessibility was probably part of her attraction. She could safely have a crush on the man without having to fear that it would ever come to anything. She didn’t, at heart, want a relationship—wasn’t ready, wasn’t sure she ever would be. But it was a nice fantasy to think that she was capable.

“I think Cavanaugh likes you. I’ve seen him staring at you before. And he always asks about you when I call,” Anita said.

“Yeah, right.” Sam rolled her eyes as she shrugged off the suggestion.

“So we may assume that Cavanaugh invited Sam because he has a special interest in her?” David looked at Sam more carefully.

Her heart fluttered.

“He sure didn’t invite the rest of us,” Gina bit back.

“Because you weren’t there.” Sam gave her the duh look. David had been bringing legal papers to the island for Anita to sign, since her name had been cleared. He ran into Sam in the lobby and they came up together, bumped into Cavanaugh, who was coming from a meeting with Anita. The suave Frenchman was one of Tsernyakov’s right-hand men, their biggest break in the case so far. They chatted for a few minutes, and the next thing she knew, they were both invited to the man’s beach party.

“I still cannot comprehend why I was asked to participate along with Samantha.” David glanced around.

“Sam,” she corrected. She hated Samantha. Buck had called her that. She didn’t want to think about Buck, now or as long as she lived.

David Moretti made that easy. She couldn’t think whatsoever when he was around.

“Maybe he wants to check out the competition,” Gina supplied the answer to his question. “Maybe he thought Sam wouldn’t go without you.”

“He definitely thinks we’re together. He called him my David when he invited him.” Sam felt her face flush. Gina was probably right. Her proximity to David had made her nervous. And they had been surprised by Cavanaugh, who wasn’t supposed to be in the office that day. He’d been in the neighborhood and dropped in to iron out some details on a deal with Anita.

“Anyway,” Gina said, “I think the two of you going together is a good idea. It’ll hold Cavanaugh back a little. If he was all over Sam, she couldn’t get any substantial recon done.”

“I’ve never discharged a weapon in my life.” David brought up his hands in a defensive gesture. “What would I be required to do?”

“You’re not going there for a shoot-out.” Gina clicked her tongue with impatience. “But just in case anything goes wrong, you can learn. They all did.” She gestured toward Anita, Carly and Sam.

“By the day after tomorrow?” Nick asked over the phone.

“The answer is no,” Brant emphasized. “Someone who is not ready for this would only become a liability. The invitation is a huge step forward. Let’s not mess it up. It would have taken us weeks to set up some kind of covert entry, figuring out security, working blind. Sam will be allowed in and shown around, and given free rein of the grounds.”

“No pressure.” Sam tried to joke off the weight she was starting to feel.

“I want to go in,” Nick suggested, not for the first time.

“You can’t.” Brant shot him down again. “Neither of us can show. We have ties to law enforcement that go back too far. If he does any kind of check at all, we’ll pop up and the mission is over before we get within sniffing distance of Tsernyakov.”

There was a moment of silence then Brant spoke again. “Okay, David. How about your brother?”

Sam looked at him. He had a brother?

“I find it highly improbable that Reese would consent to participate.” He shook his head.

“I’ll just say David couldn’t make it and go alone.” Sam came to his defense. “A switch wouldn’t work, anyway, unless they’re twins. Cavanaugh had a pretty good look at him.”

David 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.

Cavanaugh leaned back in his chair, his lips pressed together. Having to give away his money always left a bad taste in his mouth. He shrugged it off and went back to thinking about Samantha Hanley in his bed, a much more pleasant topic.

SAM STOOD by her dresser and listened to the noises in the living room. Reese Moretti was making up the couch for himself. She’d never had a man in her apartment before. Up until a few weeks ago, she’d never had an apartment.

She took a deep breath and walked out with the pillow and blanket she was holding. Better do it before she lost her nerve.

“Here.” She held out the bedding and gestured toward the couch. “Sorry, it’s the best I can do.”

All the women on the team got one-bedroom apartments. It hadn’t seemed necessary to spring for more. They spent most of their time at the office or snooping around at the various business functions the island’s elite hosted, trying to figure out who else might be doing business with Tsernyakov. The man had money coming to the island through a maze of channels. They couldn’t just sit back now that they had Cavanaugh. With a guy like Tsernyakov, one needed many backup plans.

“The powder room is all yours,” she said, not mentioning the obvious, that to shower he would need to use her bathroom. She’d spent an hour that morning cleaning it.

She hadn’t grown up in an orderly environment and at times had trouble remembering to put things away. She was improving, though. And she had paid special attention for Reese Moretti’s sake.

The idea was for the two of them to spend as much time together as possible, since, in twenty-four hours, they would have to sell Cavanaugh on the idea that they were romantically linked. That made her more nervous than the rest of the mission put together. They needed to get to know each other and become comfortable with the situation in a hurry.

“Thanks.” He glanced up, looking just like David, and yet different in so many ways. He tested the couch, wearing the same grim expression as he had since his arrival a couple of hours ago—one of the many differences between the twins. David didn’t do grim.

The azure-blue Naugahyde monster that came with the apartment was hard as a chunk of sidewalk. “Sorry,” she said again.

“Don’t sweat it. I just spent a month sleeping in the bush in Africa.”

She couldn’t picture David, always dressed in some sleek silk suit, say anything like that. “Under a bush?” She’d spent plenty of nights on the street; she could sympathize.

But he shook his head with a semiamused look. “In the bush. It’s an expression. Just means out in the wild, wherever you find a convenient piece of ground when night falls.”

Reese dropped the bedding at the end of the couch. His movements weren’t as elegant as David’s. He was more soldierlike, watchful and alert, his dark gray eyes penetrating. There was effortless strength to everything he did, his posture, his gaze; it even came through in his voice. He was clearly used to giving orders, had grilled her for a good hour after the briefing he had received from Nick Tarasov and Brant Law.

After spending most of the evening with him, skirting him warily in the small apartment, she hadn’t gotten a handle on him yet.

He sat and kicked off his safari boots, then leaned back on the couch, rubbed a hand over his face as he looked around once again, his mouth set in a tight line of disapproval.

David Moretti’s smooth and easygoing ways made her frazzled, but it took Reese’s brusque manner to get her really nervous. David had that benign, gentlemanly air about him. Reese didn’t.

“You can have the bedroom if you want.” The words came out of her mouth without thought or intention.

“Sofa’s fine.”

“Is something wrong?” Now, why would she ask that? She should have just walked away. Her nerves made her mouth run.

He watched her carefully for a long moment before he responded. “I spent the last four months in Uganda between two rebel factions, risking my team for a man who turned out to have been dead the whole time. We came back with seven gunshot injuries between the four of us.”

Clearly, he didn’t want to be here. She wondered how Brant and Nick had managed to talk him into it. From the look on his face, he wasn’t going to be a lot of fun to be around.

A single week, that was all. She could handle that standing on one foot. She’d been forced to put up with worse company in the past. The years she had spent at Brighton Federal Correctional Institute came to mind.

“Okay, I’ll leave you to get some rest.” She backed toward her bedroom.

“We don’t have much time. We’d better get to work,” he said, and when she looked at him blankly, added, “We are supposed to get to know each other.”

What did he call the hour-long interrogation he’d put her through earlier in the kitchen? Or was he going to finally reveal more about himself? She drew a deep breath and walked back, sat gingerly in the armchair opposite him.

“Nick Tarasov tells me you’re good with a gun,” he said with some undisguised doubt in his voice. “He seemed confident that you could handle yourself in a hand-to-hand tussle, too, in your own weight group.” He looked her over as if he was measuring her ounce by ounce and ended up with an expression that said she wasn’t quite up to snuff.

She resisted the urge to pull herself taller. “I went through the training” was all she said.

He raised a dark eyebrow. “So you think you can handle whatever comes your way?”

“I’m not stupid.”

The eyebrow went back down. There might have been a shadow of approval that crossed his face before he put forward his next question. “How long have we supposedly known each other?”

“Three months.” That was how long she’d been out. Where had the time gone?

“How much nudity are you comfortable with?” His gaze was sharp on her face, unflinching.

The question brought her up short. What did that have to do with anything? And yet, after a second, she had to admit that the question was relevant. Cavanaugh thought Reese—pretending to be David—was her lover. She swallowed, her already frazzled nerves buzzing as if she were undergoing electroshock therapy. “Very little.”

When you spent your teenage years on the streets, you strove to cover as much as possible, look as un-appealing as possible, as scary as possible. It had been part of her defense mechanism. She’d hidden behind the darkest of Goth looks, complete with chains and studded chokers, and complemented it all with a tongue and gaze as sharp as razors.

Prison had taken away most of her props. Anita had been working on her to make her see the lack of necessity for the rest. She wasn’t quite there yet, but even Sam had to admit that she had mellowed. She was no longer frightened of everything, so in turn she no longer wanted to frighten anyone who so much as looked at her.

The concept of nudity, however, especially in the same context with Reese, scared her. She searched for a cutting remark to disguise that fact.

“We are going to a beach party,” he said dryly before she could come up with one.

She had an image of topless cover models frolicking in the surf. Knowing Cavanaugh, it wasn’t impossible.

“How far are you willing to go for this mission of yours?” Reese laid down the challenge.

Putting it that way got her back up. “I’ll do what I have to.”

“Good.” He nodded and extended his arm toward her. “Then come and sit on my lap.”

It was the wrong thing to say. She was on her feet the next second. “Touch me and lose the hand.” The warning tore from her throat, hoarse and hard as a fist.

He tilted his head and waited a beat. “For the next three days, we are supposed to pretend that we are madly in lust. How do you think we’ll pull that off when you look like you’re ready to jump out of your skin even with three feet between us?”

She drew some air and let a couple of seconds tick by, straightened her back. Okay, so she’d overreacted. He wasn’t about to jump her. And he was right, once they got to Cavanaugh’s mansion, it would look suspicious if they never touched.

She had to make herself get over it.

She fisted then relaxed her hands, trying to swallow the memories in vain. She knew her face was getting whiter with every inch she moved toward him. Her muscles tensed. She stopped in front of him and fought to shrug off the temporary paralysis that clutched her.

Stop it.

This was stupid. He was Reese Moretti, the man who was going to keep her safe. He wasn’t Buck. He wasn’t like Buck at all.

Pretend, she told herself. Pretend it doesn’t freak you out so bad that you can barely breathe.

She looked into his face and could no longer find the disdain he’d shown since his arrival. He was watching her with a darkening expression.

“Who was it?” he asked quietly, through clenched teeth.

She could have pretended not to understand what he was asking, but she didn’t have the energy. All the starch had gone out of her, leaving her feeling weak.

“My stepfather,” she said, and couldn’t stop the images in her head.

Buck Cossner drank. When her mother wasn’t home, he drank a lot. And when he was drunk, he got mad. When he got mad, he hit her. Then he would feel bad and want to console her, no matter how hard she tried to tell him she was okay, no matter that she never cried. She’d been more afraid of his consoling than the beating. It’d always started with, I’m sorry, honey. Come sit on my lap.