Dan closed the connection and punched in another number. He spoke while the phone rang. “If we have to leave as soon as possible, we can’t get you a fake passport. They take about at least a week to produce. But we can—hello? Jesse gave me this number. Sorry to call at this hour. Uh-huh.” Dan smiled, his first smile in a while. “You brother was in the Second Battalion? Uh-huh. Those guys saw some real action in the ’Stan. Listen, a friend needs to get out of the country fast, to Canada. Tomorrow if possible. I know you can’t make a passport that quick but could you manage a passport card? Yeah, I can get you a digital photo.” Dan quirked a brow at Claire. She nodded. She had several photos on her flash drive. “I’ll get it to you by secure email. A woman. Uh-huh. Yeah, Jesse can get them to me. Yeah? Great. Thanks, man. Tell your brother Semper Fi.”
“Okay.” Dan took her hands in his. His hands were warm, tough. Her hands felt so
safe
in his. “If we leave the country from here we’re going to light up someone’s map, we need to create a little diversion. Tomorrow afternoon Jesse’ll bring your card, and we’ll leave immediately. We’ll cross the border into Canada with your passport card and my fake passport and find somewhere to sleep once we’re across the border. The next day, we go to the airport in Montreal and buy two tickets to Paris with cash. That should slow them down some. They’ll be checking for credit card payments. From Paris we’ll buy tickets to Lungi with cash, then take a puddle-jumper to Laka. It’s the closest to a shot we’ve got. They won’t know I’m with you. I’m hoping it’ll give us at least a head start. Jess and Dave and Frank will be coming on another flight, maybe from Cairo. No one could link their names to ours. No one will know we’ve got backup.” He looked down at their joined hands. “And honey? You’re going to have to do some quick work in Laka because I don’t think we’ll have much more than twenty-four hours before they figure out where we are and they come after us.”
Claire nodded. She had no idea if twenty-four hours would be enough. She also had no idea what to do once she was in Laka. All she had was this crazy compulsion to be there.
She hoped with all her heart she wasn’t dragging Dan and his friends into a wild-goose chase. In Laka they’d be exposed—way out there. If their enemy or enemies came from there, she was dragging them straight into the heart of danger.
She might have signed their death warrant.
“Dan,” she said, her voice trembling. “Thank you so much. I hope—”
“Sh.” He grinned wickedly and ran his hand up over her hip. Her panty-less hip. And unleashed a firestorm of feelings.
“So, then,” he said, pulling her to him, “we have to wait for your card. What are we going to do in the meantime?”
“You’ll think of something,” she murmured, before his mouth came down on hers.
Heat flared in her, sudden and total, infusing her whole body with an incandescent glow. He held her tightly against him, kissing her deeply while she lit up from within.
She held him hard, loving the solid, steady feel of him. He was so strong, so
unshakeable.
The world could come crashing down around her,
was
crashing down around her, but he would still be there, solid, even in the rubble.
She could count on him in every way.
Count on him for blinding pleasure, too. All the background noise of danger and terror buzzing in her head, the black fog of imminent peril, dissipated. Just drifted away, like fog under the morning sun.
She wanted more, she wanted it all, and she wanted it
now.
Claire stepped back out of his arms and pushed him a little, in the direction of the bed. He was so surprised, he actually took a step back.
She watched his eyes as she pointed behind him. “On the bed, right now,” she whispered, because the excitement had caught in her throat. Everything inside her was thrumming with desire, so intense she could hardly breathe.
Dan’s eyes flared, and he grinned. “Yes,
ma’am
!” he growled, and moved toward the bed. He put his knee on the mattress and she squeezed his arm, pulling him back.
“Don’t even think of getting on that bed unless you’re naked.” He looked at her, saw she meant it and let out his breath in one, excited gust. Making a noise low in his throat which she took to mean assent, he pulled his clothes off, his eyes never leaving hers.
Inside her was a driving drumbeat, unlike anything she’d ever felt in her life. Almost panicky in its urgency. She felt swollen, as if her skin were too small to contain her, tight bands gripped her chest, her hands shook.
Out of nowhere, this enormous tsunami of desire washed over her. The times they’d made love, Claire had realized that Dan’s desire was greater than her own. She’d been happy to make love with him, particularly once they got going, but she recognized that she would have been just as happy to cuddle up and feel him holding her. Reassurance and safety had trumped desire.
Not now.
Now these waves of heat prickling her skin were pure sexual desire, and she felt as if she’d die if she didn’t have him inside her as soon as physically possible.
Now now now!
was the drumbeat in her head, the only words she was capable of thinking.
Dan was standing there, naked, a beautiful male in his prime, fully aroused and watching her, awaiting his cue. She pushed at his chest again and he fell back onto the bed with a groaning laugh.
Claire could never have budged him if he hadn’t wanted to move. That was abundantly clear. He wouldn’t even have registered her push if he didn’t want to be on that bed as badly as she wanted him on it.
He was on his back, watching her. “Claire?” he whispered.
“Right here.” Claire took off her T-shirt. Instead of dumping it on the floor like he had, she folded it neatly and put it on the chair that doubled as a bedside table.
In under a minute she was naked, crawling on top of him, nearly delirious at the feel of him under her. Hot. Strong. Hers.
She sat up on his chest, as if he were some magnificent thoroughbred she was riding. His hands rose to her but she caught his wrists in her hands, lifting his arms above his head, back onto the mattress. Her hands couldn’t encompass his wrists but she pressed on them, holding them down. “Stay.”
There was no way in the world she could force him to do anything, let alone keep his arms restrained, but he nodded and lay still under her, arms outstretched over his head, wrists together as if manacled. She knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that he would stay that way until she signaled he was free.
She had all the power here, completely and totally.
Claire looked down at him, at this strong man who had put himself in her hands. His chest was so broad, her legs were stretched to their maximum extension. His skin was naturally dark, slightly paler on the underside of his arms. The hair on his forearms and chest was thick and curly, but long and straight under his arms.
Every single feature, every detail fascinated her. The heavy muscles, the feeling of immense power between her thighs like some superb racing engine, the dark heated look in his eyes.
She reached out her left hand and ran the backs of her fingers from his jaw, over the strong, corded muscles of his neck, down over his pectorals and the thick mat of chest hair. Her fingers found scar tissue, circular scar tissue.
“Is that what I think it is?” she whispered.
He nodded.
He was strong but he wasn’t indestructible. He’d been shot, he’d been to battle, and he was willing to go into battle again, for her. Under her hand, his heart beat strong and steady.
Claire felt so many things she couldn’t even articulate them. She couldn’t speak anyway, her throat was too tight with emotions, the full range of them except for one: fear. She had no fear at all. The past year had been full of fear—of her nightmares, of the future, of what was in her head. But now she felt completely liberated from her fears.
She and Dan were walking into danger. Something big and ferocious was after them and there was no guarantee they would find out what it was before it killed them. But they were going to face that danger together and if they went down, they would go down fighting.
Dan had lent her a little of his strength and courage and now she was back to her old self and she would die before she let herself be consumed by fear again.
He was watching her carefully. “Can I use my hands now?” he asked quietly.
She nodded, unable to speak. The feelings in her were so intense she felt as if she could hardly contain them.
Dan’s arms came down slowly, wrapped themselves around her back and pulled her down to him.
“Dan, I—”
“Sh.” He put a finger over her mouth. “I know.”
Kissing her deeply, he turned them over and entered her, a long, slow, tender penetration.
He lifted his head and looked down at her, wiping the tear that had escaped with a rough finger. “You’re mine now,” he whispered.
Wizard was crazy but no one else could search the underbelly of the web and come up with such big game. The biggest—a sitting US senator.
They both studied the stills laid out on the long table in his study. The stills were taken from videocams that had obviously been placed in various upscale hotel rooms. He had no idea how Wizard had found them and he had no intention of asking. It was enough that they were there.
This went way beyond accepting skyboxes from corporate lobbyists. This was Major League Scandal. The kind where voters spat on your grave.
He studied the photographs with deep pleasure, feeling again that strong wind of destiny blowing over him. He’d needed for Senator Neff to disappear and had even been contemplating calling in Heston because the corruption scandal was going fairly slowly. But no need—like the hooked end of a cane yanking a bad comic offstage, these would more than do the trick.
The stills were almost an extravaganza of riches, an orgy of ruin. Any one of them was a career-stopper, guaranteed to get the senator resigning and beating a trail back to his hometown with his tail between his legs. Wizard had turned over his darkweb rocks and found at least a hundred of them, plus the videos.
Ah, the videos. Better than the stills, of course. More convincing. But in the delicate art of blackmail and ruin, you start slow and then escalate.
He ran his fingers over the table, walking up and down, studying the photographs. This one—too grainy. That one—a back view of the senator, could be any horny man in a corset, wielding a whip.
Finally he decided, tapping four of the twenty photographs, marvels of lighting and form, almost as if they had been staged for his benefit. The better to ruin the senator with.
And, in a way, they had been staged, only not for a voyeuristic public.
You do like your drama, don’t you Senator?
he thought, looking at one notable composition.
The senator, in bra, panties and garters holding up black fishnet stockings, and with killer size fourteen stiletto heels, on hands and knees, face turned completely to the hidden camera.
Such an unmistakable face, too. Handsome, ruddy, with a shock of thick white hair. A face that had graced hundreds of front pages of the
WaPo
and the
Times
. A face that was a regular on
Hardball
and
Larry King Live
. A face that was the very epitome of strong and successful American manhood.
Except, of course, for the outsized Victoria’s Secret underwear the senator was wearing and the lines of white powder on a coffee table in the foreground of the picture. There were photographs of the senator hoovering the white powder up his nose with a hundred-dollar bill, too.
But the kicker was the senator’s sex partner, standing in front of the senator, who was crouching like a dog at her feet.
Only it wasn’t a her.
It took a second to get the full import of the photo because the person wielding the riding crop looked so much like a woman—and a beautiful one, at that. Long, black hair that brushed smooth shoulders, beautiful breasts barely contained by a black lace bra and black garters holding up black silk stockings. No panties.
An image to goose any man into instant horniness except for the prominent Adam’s apple on that long, smooth throat and the big, erect penis jutting out from between the legs.
Christ, this photo was going to become a classic, and would stay up on the net till the end of time.
He tapped that photo and turned to Wizard. “We’ll start with this one. Sent in jpeg of course, a thumbnail. Say that more is forthcoming. Caption—An American Senator. Send it to Sarkos and Richards.” The two top bloggers on politics, both of whom hated the senator, both of them fully willing to release the photos. The dailies would pick up the news soon enough. They wouldn’t publish the photos, oh no. But in a few days, this still, together with the others Wizard would leak in a slow and devastating sequence, would be all over the internet.
Wizard shrugged his skinny shoulders. “Okay, man, but it’ll cost you.”
He smiled. Wizard was such an easy man to read, for someone so smart. “Check your bank account,” he suggested gently.
Wizard pulled out his iPhone and his eyes rounded when he checked his account in Aruba. The amount was guaranteed to make him work especially well.
Bowen didn’t care. Money was now the least of his concerns. The Africa business was sending money to him in torrents, and that was before two new diamond mines were slated to come online.
He went to his liquor cabinet, which was a converted Florentine Renaissance
madia
, pulled out a crystal glass and poured himself a sixty-year-old Macallan that had made the
Forbes
list of most expensive whiskies. He handed Wizard a can of Red Bull without a glass.
They were both happy.
Ah, give people what they want. Such a simple rule, with such spectacular results.
“I’d say we send a video on day three. By that time the mainstream media will be in full howl. We send it to Sarkos again and he can decide what parts he wants to black out. The original will be leaked a couple of hours after Sarkos puts it up on his site. We’ll choose the one that shows the senator at his . . . best.”
Oh yeah, there were a couple showing the senator engaged in sex acts that were illegal in ten states. Not to mention the coke. “He won’t last a week.”
And during that week, there would be wild speculation about who would run for the seat. He already had plans for the two top runners. One would be discovered with an extra hundred thousand dollars in his bank account that would be eventually traced back to an Aryan Brotherhood faction and the other would have a tragic car accident.
The first one was Wizard’s lookout, the second Heston’s. He frowned as he looked at the last splash of Macallan’s in the glass, a subtle shade of light bronze, catching the light of the Murano chandelier overhead.
Heston.
Heston, who
wasn’t
doing his job. Who had let Claire Day slip through his fingers. Twice.
Heston, who had one more chance and that was it. Hit man baseball. Three strikes and you’re out.
A plan a long time in the making was coming to fruition. Each step had been carefully plotted, even more carefully carried out. He was advancing, step by careful step, in his master plan.
Claire Day was, all in all, a minor irritant, even coupled with that jarhead, who was probably fucking her. But he didn’t like even minor irritants spoiling the smooth progression of his plans.
Heston was supposed to take care of this small problem. If he couldn’t, then Heston had to go and by God he’d take care of Claire Day himself.
It would be a pleasure.