Blind Instinct (16 page)

Washington, D.C
.

H
elene Reichmann waited in the dim privacy of a sedan, which was parked a block away from a well-known chain motel. The darkly tinted windows blocked out the sporadic late-night foot traffic of tourists strolling to and from one of the several restaurants situated in the area and the occasional late-night jogger.

A cell phone vibrated. Cam Hendricks, who was seated in the front passenger seat, picked up the call, his voice barely audible. Hendricks was outwardly unremarkable, an ex-Army Ranger with the kind of tired, lined face and soft Minnesotan politeness that fooled most people. His
impressive record, encompassing stints in Chechnya and Afghanistan, plus the utter lack of emotion in his eyes had been enough to convince her. Hendricks might look like a Minnesotan farmer, but he was smart, committed and brutally efficient at what he did.

He twisted around in his seat. “Larson's swept the room. It's clean. The two neighboring suites are empty. If you want to make the meeting, my recommendation is that we go now.”

Minutes later, Helene exited the third-floor elevator, along with Hendricks and a third bodyguard, Marisa Sutton, a cold-eyed blonde who looked enough like Helene that they could be mother and daughter.

The inclusion of Marisa in the small, elite group Helene employed to protect her had been practical on more than one level. Part Russian, part Irish, Marisa was an ex-DEA agent with a formidable record in undercover work—notably, busting Colombian drug operations. She had “softened” the look of the security detail around Helene, making them appear more like a family group. The sleight of hand was subtle but useful, especially when they were in places they didn't want to be noticed. In the disparate worlds Helene
moved between, superficial impressions were crucial.

Marisa had also been clear about what she wanted. The years she had spent in deep cover and comparative luxury, laundering money for drug lords, had resulted in a high arrest record, an intimate knowledge of Colombian cartels and a calculating ambition. At forty years of age, Marisa's ambition was clear-cut. She didn't want the gold watch and a service pension; she simply wanted the gold.

They paused outside the suite Hendricks had booked in response to the meeting that had been demanded. In all the years Helene had headed the remnants of her father's cabal, she had never given in to such a demand. She had made the rules and enforced compliance. That simple and effective strategy had changed the instant she had received a phone call advising her that the caller was aware of her identity.

The shock—the blunt statement of her real name, after almost an entire lifetime of operating under a number of different identities—had been considerable.

Blackmail was a bitch. She had little power in the arrangement, and only one card to play. Her
blackmailer wouldn't expose her unless he was out of options, because the moment he did, he lost his power and his last chance at the powerful future he coveted.

Marisa knocked. Seconds later, Larson opened up and let them in.

The drapes were pulled tight, cutting down on the risk of any directional listening systems that depended on the vibration of sound on hard surfaces to pick up what was being said. The television was on, the drone of a sports commentator providing background noise and vibration that would mask the conversation in the event that Larson had missed a listening device.

Helene set her briefcase down on the dining table and extracted a newspaper. She dropped the paper onto the table. A story about two linked homicides occupied a single, narrow column. Needless to say, the story hadn't made the front page. Shreveport, Louisiana, barely registered in D.C. and it flat-out didn't exist on the international stage—her usual area of interest—but for the past twenty-four hours it had become her focus.

The man who had requested the meeting skimmed the story, although Helene had no doubt
that he had been fully briefed. Rear Admiral Saunders was noted for his brilliance in the area of undercover operations.

A second fact registered.

He had cursorily acknowledged both Hendricks and Larson, whom he had met on one other occasion, but he had barely glanced at Marisa, who, to her knowledge he
hadn't
met. And, Marisa was ignoring him.

Interesting. Normally, Marisa was cool and unrelenting about her work. Larson had searched him for weapons and wires, but Marisa should still be watching him like a hawk. Added to that, any man with red blood running in his veins usually looked Marisa over, even if the perusal was purely automatic.

She was almost certain they knew each other.

Helene glanced at Hendricks. His icy gaze connected with hers, his message clear. He had noticed the slight oddness of the byplay; she could leave it with him.

She relaxed. “What do you know about the situation in Shreveport?”

“Delgado was Lopez's man.”

She had known who Delgado was. It was the fact that he had been killed in Shreveport and in
conjunction with Sara Fischer that caused her concern. “Who killed him?”

“Not one of ours.”

A tingling started at her nape. If a federal agent hadn't been responsible for shooting Delgado, that opened up a raft of unpalatable options. “Was the killing cartel related?”

“The hit was internal.”

A small shock of adrenaline went through her.

Lopez
.

He had killed his own man.

Not that murder was unusual for Lopez. He had been responsible for a string of cold-blooded killings over the years, including his father, Marco Chavez, and a number of her own people. But the location of the killing and the fact that he made no attempt to conceal the body was…disturbing.

A wisp of emotion caught at her, threaded with a raw undercurrent of fear. She should have ordered his death when she'd had the chance and buried her last, unpalatable link to Marco. Over the years there had been any number of opportunities to kill him. She hadn't taken them. He had been her one weak spot, a weakness he was now using to bring her down.

She picked up the newspaper, folded it and slipped it under her arm. There had to be more to justify a meeting that was, quite frankly, so high risk she had been tempted not to show. “What else?”

His expression didn't change. “Edward Dennison was in Shreveport.”

Her gaze sharpened. Dennison was a complication she hadn't foreseen. The last she'd heard he was dead, killed by Lopez in a botched CIA operation. The fact that Dennison had also been in Shreveport pointed up the fact that Sara Fischer either knew something, or had something of importance.

The tension at her nape increasing, she studied her opponent. He was building to something—no doubt a further demand. “What, exactly, did Sara Fischer find?”

“The information Hartley handed to Todd Fischer, a copy of a Berlin warehouse manifest. It makes interesting reading.”

It was also a link back to Berlin, to theft and murder—a link to her.

Her jaw tightened. She had made two major mistakes that she knew of in this lifetime. She had lost Reichmann's Ledger, the book containing
identity information for the upper echelon of the cabal, and she had failed to kill Alex Lopez when she'd had numerous chances.

Now it seemed she had made a third mistake. Over twenty years ago she had arranged for George Hartley, a former cabal member and a traitor to their cause, to be executed. She had searched his house and put pressure on Hartley's son to turn over anything that might link Hartley to the cabal. They had found very little. A few WWII mementoes, a folder of old black-and-white photographs.

She had checked the negatives. Several of the photos had been missing, including a shot of George, herself and two others sitting on a riverbank in Colombia. The photo was distant and a little blurred, and she had been a child when it had been taken, but the fact remained that it had been a photo of her. To her knowledge it was the only one in existence that linked her to the
Nordika
debacle.

She had failed to find the photo. At the time the risk had seemed minimal. George had been dead and the
Nordika
tragedy had been covered up. The fact that somewhere, someone could possibly have in their possession a faded 1940s
snapshot of an unnamed group of children sitting on a riverbank had ceased to be important.

Hartley had also dealt with the gold bullion and the other items looted from Berlin. He and a handful of others had worked with Dengler to shift and secure the crates. Hartley had been executed, then Admiral Monteith, who had proved elusive, eighteen months later. To her knowledge, she had been the only living person left who had known exactly what had been in the crates.

Or that there was a cache of diamonds.

Lopez had known about the gold bullion since he was a child. As part of the price for sheltering them when they had first landed in Colombia, Marco had taken more than half. Given that both Dennison and Lopez were chasing the information that Hartley had handed to Todd Fischer, she also had to assume that somehow, perhaps again through Hartley, they had found out about the diamonds.

And it was now possible that Saunders had, also. “What is it, exactly, that you want?”

“Lopez.”

The sheer arrogance of the demand took her breath, but she had expected and planned for it. Capturing Lopez would be a very public coup,
and would make up for Saunders's equally public disgrace as the prime mover behind the cover-up of the
Nordika
affair.

He produced another paper from his briefcase.

When she saw the page folded open to display the ACE advertisement, she went cold inside. Lopez wasn't the only one who liked to play games; Saunders wasn't averse to them, either. And even after all this time it was interesting to note that he still thought he could win.

His colorless gaze was icy. “You're corresponding with Lopez. Arrange a meeting.”

“I can't guarantee he'll show.”

“I've already taken the liberty of inserting the ad. Given his eagerness to make contact, he'll take the bait. All you have to do is arrange the time and place, I'll take care of the rest.”

Minutes later, Helene allowed Hendricks to help her into the rear of the car. As they accelerated away from the immediate danger of the motel, she glanced at Marisa's controlled profile. Satisfaction eased the cold anger that flowed through her.

Saunders was playing the part of the gamester to the hilt. No doubt he assumed he held all the cards.

Too bad he wasn't playing with the full deck.

A
t one in the morning, Sara flicked off Bayard's wide-screen TV, walked out to the kitchen and made herself a hot drink. Winding her fingers around the mug and slowly sipping hot chocolate, she strolled around Bayard's lounge, studying the books on his shelves, a series of watercolors done by his grandfather of the Shreveport countryside and the odd piece of football memorabilia scattered around the room.

She felt alert and unsettled, and not just because she had deciphered another coded message.

Bayard had been gone for more than
three
hours.

The thought had passed through her mind that he wasn't working, that he was simply with Lissa, then she dismissed it. She had known Bayard for
most of her life. In some ways she knew him as well as she knew Steve. He was as ruthless in his personal relationships as he was in his career, but he operated to a rigid code. He had dated a long list of beautiful women, but according to Steve, the ground rules had always been clear-cut. Bayard only ever dated one at a time, and when it was over, it was over.

The fact that he had openly declared his interest was subtly reassuring. Bayard was close to family. He wouldn't touch her if all he wanted was a short-term fling.

Nothing had been said, but at a primitive level the first and most basic foundation of a relationship had been laid. He'd claimed her in front of Rousseau and his men, and she had capitulated.

Ever since that frantic kiss in the kitchen, she had been on edge, sharply aware that she wanted him, that the logical conclusion to the kiss was lovemaking.

The thought that Bayard could, conceivably, date her for a time, sleep with her, then end the relationship, wasn't an option. She didn't love easily and, since he had never committed to marriage, she was willing to bet that neither did Bayard. But that didn't change the fact that
falling for him was tantamount to stepping off a cliff. She was acutely aware of huge blank spaces in his life she knew little or nothing about.

Bayard was an alpha male and a self-professed overachiever. He had walked out on a promising law career to become an FBI agent. In the space of little more than a decade, he had made division head. Not satisfied with the FBI fast track, he had switched to National Intelligence. She didn't know exactly what he did there, and that was the scariest thing of all; when she'd asked him on the flight, his job description had sounded like a mission statement. Instead of controlling agents and operations, he appeared to control entire networks.

She rinsed her cup, placed it in the dishwasher and walked through to the sitting room. She picked up the remote and flicked through a number of channels. Unable to settle, she turned the set off. She was on the point of going to bed when Bayard stepped through the front door and dropped his briefcase on the floor. He walked toward her, and perversely she wished she had gone to bed. Waiting up for him suddenly seemed too needy.

Awareness flashed in his gaze. Seconds later, his mouth was on hers, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of her bottom, jerking her close.
Lifting up on her toes she wound her arms around his neck. The passion was white-hot and instant, the relief of her breasts flattened against his chest, the jut of his penis digging into her belly, burning away the gnawing insecurities.

Wrenching his mouth free, he dragged her sweatshirt and the soft, sheer tank she was wearing up and over her head and discarded it, baring her breasts. Dipping his head, he took one nipple in his mouth.

Sensation jerked through her in hot, dizzying waves. She tore at his shirt and found naked skin. Seconds later, she was on her back on the carpet, Bayard's mouth on hers. Impatiently, he shrugged out of the shirt and tossed it to one side. His fingers hooked in the waistband of her sweats and hauled them down, taking her panties with them. Cold air circulated around her bottom and thighs. The carpet was rough and prickly against her bare skin, but the discomfort barely registered as he came down between her legs. She fumbled at the fastening of his trousers, dragging the zipper down, and felt him, blunt and engorged, nudging between her legs. His gaze locked with hers. A second later he shoved deep and the room dissolved.

She had a moment to consider that he hadn't
used a condom, that he was naked inside her, then the driving rhythm shoved her over the edge.

Long minutes later, she stirred. Bayard had rolled over and pulled her with him so that she was lying half across him. At some point he had dispensed with his pants, socks and shoes and was now fully naked. One big hand was locked lazily over her bottom, keeping her leg draped over his hip and her pelvis angled so that he was still lodged inside her.

Just feet away, rain was pounding on the windows, the faint chill reaching through the glass, but she wasn't cold. Heat poured from Bayard. Wherever they touched their skin was glued together with perspiration.

She shifted slightly, adjusting her hips and felt him firm and extend inside her. One lazy hand swept up, cupping her breast and the low level throb in her belly sharpened. She lifted up on her elbows, her hair falling in a dark curtain around them and delicately, deliberately, clenched around him. “Shall we go to bed?”

He rolled her onto her back, lifted his hips and slid back into her with one gliding stroke.

“Not yet.”

At four in the morning, Bayard pulled her to her feet and they finally made it to his bed.

He jerked back the covers, waited for her to climb in, then flicked on the lamp and slid in beside her.

She snuggled in closer and let her eyes drift closed.

Bayard propped himself on an elbow, one hand cupped lazily around her breast. “Are you likely to get pregnant?”

Her eyes popped open. The question, after what had happened, was incredibly mundane, but pertinent. She didn't need to count. Her period was due in a few days. “It's possible. I ovulated last week.”

“Then there's no point in using a condom until after your period. If you get one.”

“Why do I get the idea that won't bother you?”

His hand slipped down over her rib cage and spanned her abdomen. “If you're pregnant, you're pregnant. There's nothing we can do about it now.”

“I could take a morning-after pill.”

He looked briefly incensed. “Have you ever had to do that before?”

“No.” She had never had wild, unplanned, unprotected sex in her life. Bayard was a first in a number of respects.

“Good,” he said with evident satisfaction. “Don't do it this time. If you're pregnant, we'll deal with it. Thank God you didn't ever get married.”

An odd note in his voice caught her attention. “What would happen if I had?”

“You wouldn't have.”

“I had boyfriends.”

“Like that guy you dated about three years back. What was his name? Oh, yeah, Les Culver. A councilor.”

The fact that Bayard not only knew Les's name, but knew
when
she had dated him, rang alarm bells. “How did you know I dated Les?” She had dated a number of men over the years. Les was significant only because he had been the last one.

“Jay Guidry.”

Now she was wide-awake. Jay Guidry was a detective working for the Bossier PD. “You had me
surveilled?
”

He looked impatient. “I wouldn't call it that, exactly.”

“
What then?
”

“Calm down. I just got Jay to check on you every now and then.”

“Why?”

His expression was unrepentant. “Steve was gone. You were alone except for your Dad, and he was sick.”

A small piece of an almost forgotten puzzle dropped into place. When she had been dating Les,
he
had ended it, not her, which had been unusual. The relationship hadn't exactly been hot and heavy, which had been precisely the reason it had lasted so long. At the time she had been certain that Les had been warned off.

Her father, who hadn't liked Les, had denied it. Steve had been overseas at the time, so she hadn't been able to blame Les's default on him. “It was you. You warned Les off. I thought it could have been Steve, even though he was away, but he never admitted to it.
Why?
”

He bent and kissed her, the kiss oddly sweet. “Why do you think?”

At seven in the morning, Bayard took the message Sara had decoded through to his office while she pulled on one of his shirts and walked through to the kitchen to make coffee.

When he took the cup she handed him, he pulled her close for a leisurely kiss before starting on the coffee. “There's only one thing happening in town this week and that's a water conference. Nasser Riyad. He's the leader of a small, independent Arab territory, with huge oil reserves and a U.S. strategic air base. He styles himself as above politics but the reality is that he has a foot in each camp, cutting deals with the West while doing business with terrorist factions on the side.”

“So now what? Check Nasser's Washington connections?”

“And his investment base. In 1984, when Hartley betrayed Reichmann, threatening the cabal with exposure, she liquidated assets and moved substantial sums of money. The problem has been finding where she moved it. If we can tie Nasser's oil shares to Helene, or any other member of the cabal, we can freeze the assets and impound them.”

Bayard picked up his phone and began making calls. Thirty minutes later, Lissa called back. They had tracked down two major buys of Riyad's shares in 1984, by two separate companies. After checking with Inland Revenue, who had searched their database, they had established
that both companies were owned by the same parent company. They were still fighting their way through a labyrinth of offshore shell companies, but they were finally getting somewhere.

Sara took one look at his complete focus and quietly left his office. It was Sunday, but evidently Bayard's people worked 24-7, and he was expected in at the office. She had a shower, changed into sweats and a tank top and tied her hair back in a ponytail, then padded out to the kitchen to see if Bayard had the makings of breakfast in his fridge.

Half an hour later she slid a large cheese omelet onto a warmed plate, cut off one-third for herself, transferred it to another plate, then divided bacon and a salsa she'd cobbled together from avocadoes, tomatoes and lime juice between the two plates. She checked the oven and noted that the biscuits she'd made from the unopened pack of mix she'd found in Bayard's pantry were almost done.

She knocked on the door of the study and opened it. Bayard swiveled around in his chair. His gaze shifted to her breasts and she logged the moment that his focus changed.

A small shiver went through her as he pushed
out of his chair and walked toward her. Sometime in the last hour he had rolled up his shirtsleeves and undone the top buttons of his shirt, baring a slice of tanned chest and dark, curling hair. “We have to eat first.”

“That's what I had in mind.”

She opened the door wider, so the smell of fried bacon could waft through.

His expression changed. “You cooked?”

She walked back to the kitchen, her cheeks burning because she could feel his gaze locked on her butt. “It's an old Southern tradition.”

“My mother didn't cook. If there's food, don't let me touch you until we've eaten.”

Grabbing a kitchen towel, she pulled the oven door open, slid the pan of biscuits out and deposited it on a heatproof pad she'd placed on the counter.

The expression on Bayard's face got even stranger. “You made biscuits.”

She found butter. There weren't any jams or preserves, which strengthened the theory that Bayard had probably bought the biscuit mix so one of his girlfriends could make them for him, and in the process had neglected to buy jam.

When she set the butter down on the counter,
he grabbed her, lifted her clear off her feet and kissed her hard on the mouth. Setting her down, he took a seat at the counter, picked up his fork and began to eat, that same glazed look in his eyes. Finally she got it. The food was basic, down-home cooking, but for Bayard it was pure magic. His enjoyment of such a simple thing as a hot biscuit told her something else she needed to know about him. As high-flying as Bayard was in the intelligence world, his needs and his instincts were the same as most other men.

Twenty minutes later, when the security detail Marc had requested were in place around the apartment, he left for the office. He didn't want to leave. After waiting this long for Sara, all he wanted was to be with her. Drinking coffee, making love, watching TV or fighting, he didn't care.

He was thirty-six and he had wanted Sara for most of his life. He had tried to get her when he was twenty and failed. He wasn't about to let her slip away this time.

Satisfaction curled through him at the thought that he might have made her pregnant. It wasn't a guarantee, but close enough.

As he climbed into his car, he slipped back into work mode. The last piece in the cabal puzzle settled into place. Over the past few months he had unraveled the network, using information gleaned from investigations into the senior cabal members who had been murdered by Lopez and Helene. The scenario had unfolded in a predictable way. Helene and her aging court had been using money and political influence to play the war game, mostly in innocuous, low-risk ways. The result had been budgetary allocations that benefited certain arms corporations in which the cabal held a large number of shares.

Those had since been frozen, the sales history tracked, but at no point had any of the transactions led them to Helene, because she'd been clever enough to keep herself separate from the upper echelon. Two names had consistently surfaced with the multinationals: Seaton and Ritter. Both of those men were now dead, cutting off that avenue of investigation.

Helene had operated as a separate entity within the cabal, controlling the major assets and the accounts, making it easy to detach herself from it once it had gone belly up. But, as politically savvy as she was, she had made one major mistake. She
had thrown in with Nasser, and from the coded threats, he was almost certain Lopez knew about it.