Endgame (Last Chance Series) (11 page)

"Hey, I didn't mean to bring out the claws." His smile was crooked, and despite herself
, she felt her anger evaporate. "I just have a problem with things I can't quantify."

"I imagine it ranks right up there with your dislike of authority."

Something flashed in his eyes, but before she could identify it, he managed to mask it. "Practicing on me?" There was a hint of mockery now, the sparring begun in earnest.

"I don't need to practice. You're easy enough to read." She shot him what she hoped was a self-satisfied smile. "You get off on adrenaline rushes. Take what you want. And are quick to put yourself smack-dab in the middle of danger. How am I doing so far?"

His eyes narrowed slightly, but he didn't say anything, and ignoring the signs, she continued, "You're a natural leader, but you've never been comfortable with the role. You're a loner. Command loyalty, but don't allow yourself to get close to anyone."

He moved closer, his expression controlled, but the tic in his jaw gave him away. She fought against the urge to step back, instead holding her ground. "You probably come f
rom a troubled background, self-reliance the only thing that got you through. You think you have the whole world fooled, Gabriel, but I can see who you really are."

She'd meant to hurt him. To get back at him for maligning her profession, but somewhere along the way, she'd lost her taste for blood. A shadow in his expression told her she'd hit home, and she wanted nothing more than to take back her words.

His lips curled upward. He'd recognized her moment of doubt. She sucked in a breath, ready to add insult to injury, anything to stop his smirk, but he beat her to the punch, closing the distance between them, his mouth taking possession of hers.

There was nothing tentative in the kiss. It was a declaration of war. Take all or perish. His fingers curled around the back of her neck, pulling her closer, their tongues dueling for position, for fit.

Some part of her not yet consumed knew she should stop this. That there was danger. But she pushed the thought ruthlessly aside, giving in, instead, to the sensory onslaught. He backed her against the wall, his body pinning hers, and she pressed back against him, determined to give as good as she got.

The air around them sizzled with electricity, as if their joining had completed a circuit. Positive to negative. Pole to pole. She twisted her fingers through his hair, the black strands wiry and strong. Like the man.

He cupped her breast, his thumb circling her nipple, and she swallowed a moan, the action only heightening her desire. His mouth moved to her cheek, then her ear. Waves of pure physical pleasure washed across her as his tongue found the soft whorl of her ear. This time she couldn't stop her cry, and he pulled back to look at her, his smile slow and sure.

Madison fought for breath, and met his eyes full on, their wills battling even as their bodies pressed closer. She licked her lips, the skin raw from his bruising touch, but all she wanted was more.

With an exhale that resembled a sigh, he closed the scant distance between them again, his kiss different this time. Possessive. As if he was sealing a bargain she'd no idea they'd made. A shiver of worry rippled through her but was gone before she had time to think about it, replaced by the white heat of his touch.

His hands explored her body, and though they still wore their clothes, she might as well have been naked. His heat invaded every part of her, a raging fire that she had no desire to extinguish.

He pushed her blouse off her shoulder, his lips branding her, and she reached for the buttons on his shirt, determined to taste him as he had tasted her, needing him even now to know that she was a worthy opponent.

She slid her hands inside the cool cotton, splaying them across his chest. She could feel his heart beating wildly against her fingers, her own matching the rhythm, as if they could only operate in tandem.

His mouth found hers again, and they pressed close, her hands trapped between them, raw physical need overriding all other thought. She ground against him, rewarded by his muffled groan, and he cupped her buttocks, their bodies rubbing together in an age-old dance.

Madison let conscious thought go, intent instead upon riding the wave, finding release from the glorious pain building inside of her. Release that only he could give her.

The door shook with the force of a knock, the noise taking its own sweet time to register in Madison's beleaguered brain.

"Excuse me?" The soft western drawl on the other side of the glass was hesitant. Embarrassed.

The emotion hit Madison with the force of a tornado.

Embarrass
ment.

Sweet mother of God, what was she doing? She pushed away from Gabriel, fumbling with the buttons on her shirt, trying to ignore the still smoldering embers in his eyes. Turning, with what she hoped was a half-coherent smile, she walked to the door.

The ranch manager was standing on the other side looking through the window, shifting from foot to foot, looking extremely uncomfortable. Madison wished herself on another planet, but of course nothing happened, so instead she opened the door and apologized in a breathy voice that no doubt confirmed anything the woman had already seen.

"I didn't mean to interrupt," the woman said, her gaze darting back and forth from Madison to Gabriel who wa
s leaning languorously against the wall. "It's only that there was a phone call for you." She looked down, consulting a piece of paper in her hand. "From Cullen Pulaski."

"What did he want?" Gabriel pushed away from the wall, his expression fierce.

Despite the screen between them, the woman took a step back. "He wants you to call immediately." She paused, twisting the paper in her hands. "He said to tell you there's been another murder."

MORGUES SMELLED LIKE HOSPITALS. The fact had always seemed surreal to Gabe. People fighting to live shouldn't smell like people who had already lost the battle. He'd spent a hell of a lot of time watching people die. He supposed if he thought about it, he'd have to say he was an expert. But he'd always made it a point not to dwell on anything.

Ever
.

Candace Patterson lay naked on the table, the three-inch gash in her abdomen a stark contrast to the pallid color of her skin. The victim of an apparent mugging, the body had originally been sent to the medical examiner's office, but once Candace's connection with the accord had been established, she'd been transferred to Braxton Labs.

Cullen Pulaski in action.

"I thought you were in Colorado?" Tracy Braxton's smile was warm, a pleasant contrast to the harsh reality of the lab.

"I came straight from the airport."

"Which explains why you look like hell." It was just a comment her gaze neutral, but Gabe flinched anyway.

Sleep was the least of his problems, actually. He and Madison had driven to Denver to take a red-eye in absolute silence, the black mountains echoing their mood. He'd wanted to reach out to her. To tell her that he hadn't meant to kiss her. Hadn't meant to want her. But he couldn't find the words, and she so obviously regretted the kiss, he'd decided finally that the best way to handle the situation was to pretend it had never happened.

Coward's way out, the voice in his head taunted, but he pushed it aside. It had been a mistake. It was as simple as that. A heat-of-the-moment reaction that had nothing to do with reality. Still, he was glad Cullen had ordered her back to headquarters. A little distance would do them both a world of good.

"Hey, you still with me?" Tracy's voice penetrated his ruminations, and with a wry grin, he pulled his attention back to the present.

"Jet lag. Sorry."

"No problem." She shrugged, expertly cutting open the abdomen to reveal internal organs. "I'm just glad you're here. Seems the death toll is rising."

"Looks like
she met with the wrong end of a knife." Gabe tilted his head toward the wound. "Cullen said she'd been robbed?"

Tracy nodded, her braids swaying with the motion. "I'm guessing post mortem. That's when she was stabbed."

"You certain?" Gabe frowned, digesting the new information.

"Absolutely. Body temperature combined with lack of blood loss makes it
a sure thing. If this had been a mortal wound it would have bled like the dickens. But there was hardly any blood on the body at all, and according to the forensics folks, very little at the scene. My guess is someone found the body, and after making certain she was dead, stripped off her valuables."

"So you got any idea what did kill her?"

"Single shot. Back of the head." Tracy put down her scalpel and reached for a plastic tray behind her. Using forceps, she picked up a bullet from the tray, holding it up for Gabe to see. "Hollow point. Whoever the killer was, the guy meant business."

Gabe took the forceps, examining the tiny lump of metal. "I'd say that changes
the rules of the game a bit."

"Ups the ante, if I had to call it." Tracy's somber gaze met his.

"Whatever this is about, I'd say it's coming to a head."

Which meant he needed to get back to the operations room, to discuss this newest information with Madison and the team. It was time to put her profiling to the test. They needed to discover who was behind the attacks—before someone else wound up dead.

*****

"
SO YOU THINK Alan Stewart was murdered." Harrison sat across from Nigel at the conference room table eating an Egg McMuffin. The table was cluttered with the residue of the rest of his breakfast, including a hash brown wrapper and the styrofoam container for pancakes. The man ate like a horse and never showed an ounce of it.

Madison pushed the hair out of her face, wishing she'd stopped to take a shower before coming to the operations room, but Cullen had demanded they come posthaste, and so
, despite her exhaustion, here she was. If Gabriel Roarke could keep going, then by God, so could she.

"Madison, are you listening?" Harrison was frowning, his brows drawn together to form a line, all semblance of the boy next door vanishing with the motion.

"Sorry. I guess I'm more tired than I thought." To emphasize the point she yawned, then smiled ruefully. "You were asking about Alan Stewart, right?"

Harrison nodded.

"One of the first on the scene was a cardiologist. He believes Stewart had some kind of cardiac event. Combined with Aston's and Smith's cause of death, I think it's a definite possibility that Alan Stewart was injected, as well."

"But you don't have any physical proof." This from Nigel who had moved to stand by the window.

"No. But we were planning to contact the widow to obtain permission for an exhumation. That way Tracy could prove the presence of potassium chloride. But in light of Candace Patterson's apparent murder, it may prove unnecessary."

"Same for Luther Macomb," Harrison said. "Which is probably just as well, as I suspect it's a dead end anyway. The scrap metal from the car is probably part of a hundred different machines by now."

"We can add Jacob Dashal to the confirmed list." Payton Reynolds spoke up from the corner where he'd pulled something off the fax machine. "This is forensic verification that the saw was tampered with." He waved the paper for emphasis. "The man's electrocution was definitely not an accident."

"Which means we're at three confirmed murders, two that seem likely, and one that fits the pattern but without evidence of foul play." Madison glanced over at the white board and the black-and-white photos of the deceased. Real people. All dead.

"Make that four confirmed."

Madison jumped at the sound of Gabriel's voice, wishing again that she'd grabbed a shower. Not that she cared what he thought
, it's just that dueling with him took a lot of energy, and at the moment, she felt as if she'd slept in a bus depot. Which wasn't far from the truth.

What she really needed was a way to erase the last twelve hours, or at least the part she'd spent in liplock with the man. What in the w
orld had she been thinking? Fortunately, he seemed prepared to pretend the whole thing never happened, which suited her just fine.

"Candace Patterson was shot in the head." Gabriel's words jerked her out of her reverie.

"Do you have ballistics?" she asked.

"Just a slug. Hollow point. Tracy's folks are running it for ID. But I doubt she finds anything. The whole thing smells like a hit
."

"Which is yet another change in M.O." Harrison pushed away the last of his food. "So where does that leave us?"

"Trying to establish a link between the victims." Madison leaned forward, reviewing the facts listed on the white board.

"I thought we'd all agreed that the accord was the common link." Nigel turned a chair around and straddled it, crossing his arms on the back.

"There are a lot of people working on the accord, Nigel," Madison said. "But not all of them are being targeted. It's important for us to establish why these particular people were chosen."

"Which brings us to their role in the accord," Gabriel added. "Harrison, what have you got?"

"Not as much as I'd like." He shrugged and picked up a piece of paper. "The first three men killed—Aston, Macomb and Stewart—were all members of the business consortium, but not members of the board. Their key activity with the accord seems to be that they all served on the steering committee."

"Pre
-accord you mean," Payton clarified, his words as usual barely audible.

"
Exactly." Harrison nodded. "Barnes also served on the steering committee, but unlike the other three, he went on to serve on the consortium board, and in addition was the first chair of the active delegation meeting with the Chinese."

"So the initial murders might have been an attempt to retard the process, and when that failed, they attempted to take out a major player," Nigel said.

"Except that this has been a team effort from the beginning. With Barnes out of the picture, his second in command, Jacob Dashal took over."

"Until his untimely death and Bingham Smith stepped in." Gabriel, too, was turning Harrison's information over in his head.

"That's where the first deviation occurs," Harrison continued. "Interestingly enough, Smith had no involvement in the planning of the accord—his job was simply to negotiate. He'd had private dealings with the Chinese for years, and so this was par-for-the-course for him, but his involvement appears to be mainly at the behest of Cullen Pulaski."

"Meaning what, he wasn't interested in the success of the accord?" Payton was pacing in front of the window as if the movement helped him think.

"From a political standpoint he stood to gain a great deal. Economically, however, it would have been a wash for him."

"And he was on the board," Madison said, beginning to see a new pattern.

"Yes." Harrison nodded. "The third board member to die. A double hit if you will, because as with Barnes's, Dashal's and Smith's deaths, not only did his death have an effect on the accord, but on the consortium itself."

"So the change in strategy might be related to more than just the accord." Gabriel met Harrison's gaze across the table.

"Hard to say definitively, but it's something to consider."

"What about Candace Patterson? How does she fit in?" Nigel was leaning so far over the chair it was in danger of tipping.

"Another deviation. She was neither on the original steering committee nor on the board. But Cullen had tapped her to fill Smith's vacancy on the negotiation team."

"What's her expertise?" Madison asked, caught up in Harrison's speculation.

"She's fluent in eight Chinese dialects. Studied abroad and worked for two years as a missionary. Since returning to the U.S. she's worked for Lexco, first heading up their Asian division, and then moving to corporate. She was recently promoted to VP, and became active in the consortium only when Lexco decided to get on board with the talks for the accord."

"So what we're looking at is an escalation in pattern," Madison mused. "We start with practically untraceable murders in the very begin
ning stage of talks about a possible economic accord with China. When those fail to derail plans, the targets change, and people higher up the ladder begin to die. But again there is little impact on the accord itself."

"Everyone, it seems, is expendable
, and as people die, they're replaced without question," Harrison continued, expanding on her thoughts.

"Except Cullen," Gabriel added, glancing at Madison, his message clear.

"Which is interesting in and of itself, but we'll examine that later," Nigel said, cutting in on the conversation. "The point you're making here is that as the accord gains popularity and moves closer to reality, the importance of the targets grows."

"Not only that, the M.O. for murder becomes more haphazard." Madison blew out a breath, trying to quantify her thoughts. "What began as a carefully orchestrated campaign, something almost undetectable, gradually begins to unravel until our most recent victim is killed in cold blood."

"But surely it was made to look like a robbery," Nigel said.

"If Tracy is to be believed that's pure coincidence,"
Gabriel answered. "A case of the body being in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"Which leaves us with a desperate enemy," Payton said, cutting to the heart of the matter.

"Does anyone know what the Chinese reaction has been to the latest murders?" Harrison had risen to stand behind his chair, his hands gripping the back.

"I don't know that there's been time for them to understand the ramifications of Candace Patterson's death," Madison said. "But according to the media, Bingham Smith's death, accident or no, has caused something of a stir."

"The Chinese won't like the two murders happening so close together." Payton stood by the window, his face in silhouette, his scar highlighted in the light. "They'll view them as omens of bad fortune."

"Which might mean our killer has achieved his goal." Harrison's tone was thoughtful.

"No." Madison shook her head. "Whoever is behind this won't stop until he's certain the accord is dead—
if
killing the accord is in fact his objective."

"Of course it's the objective. Harrison just spent the last fifteen minutes proving it." Nigel had obviously had enough of their deliberations, clearly preferring action to talk.

"I'm not saying it isn't." Madison raised her hands in defense. "I'm just saying that it's a little early to declare anything absolutely."

"Seven murders is pretty damning, don't you think?" Nigel's voice was clipped, even for a Brit.

"Look, Nigel, she's only saying we need to tread cautiously here. Not jump to any conclusions. We need to wait until we have all the facts."