Barefoot with a Stranger (Barefoot Bay Undercover #2)(29)
They both froze at the sound, so utterly foreign. It was easy to think of Gabe as invincible, emotionless, fierce to the bone. But he’d lost a woman he loved deeply, and now likely had a child he had very little hope of claiming as his.
And Mal was about to ice that cake with a frosting of bad news. I slept with your sister, buddy.
Chessie gave her head a quick shake, her eyes communicating that she was thinking the same thing. They couldn’t do this. They couldn’t make his life worse or more complicated. And, despite their best efforts, he’d insist on a change in the plan, and that would just take more time to find out what he needed to know.
Mal pulled Chessie back into the yard next to the house. “We can get in and out of Cuba fast and clean.”
She nodded. “We’ll find that boy, get the DNA, and be home in two days.”
That may or may not be true, but he loved her optimism. They looked at each other, making a mutual, silent, absolutely correct decision. They weren’t telling Gabe a thing.
Turning, they started to hustle back to the street, picking up speed just to get away from the stomach-wrenching sound of Gabe having a horrible private moment.
Just as they reached the front of the house, the full weight of a man pounced on Mal’s back, smacking him to the ground with one smooth move and taking Chessie down with him.
Mal whipped around to meet a gaze that was hard as nails and mad as hell.
Chapter Nine
“Lila Wickham is here to see you, Mr. Drummand.”
Roger Drummand stared at his assistant, hoping like hell the blood draining from his face wasn’t visible to her. His assistant was no trained agent, of course, but she was sharper than the last one, which was never a good thing when you were hiding as much as he was.
He’d learned that the hard way…when Lila Wickham entered his organization.
“I’ll be right with her,” he said, shuffling the report he’d been reading. His gaze dropped to the picture of a young woman who shared eye and hair color with one of his most annoying, aggravating, and, damn it, talented former consultants. He couldn’t tell if Francesca Rossi, who apparently had brilliant computer skills, also had her brother’s aptitude in the field. But it was a safe bet annoying arrogance was embedded in their genes.
He flipped to the next shot, this one of this younger female Rossi toasting a brew at an airport bar, laughing, flirting, smiling at Malcolm Harris like the son of a bitch hung the moon. Why?
The report said they appeared to meet by accident, stayed in the same hotel after mass flight cancellations due to storms, and f*cked their ever-loving brains out until Harris blew out in the middle of the night.
They’d lost him then. But the woman rented a car and headed south to Florida, where Roger happened to know Gabriel Rossi had moved to work for a private security firm. Or so he said.
“Roger.” Lila closed the door behind her with a solid click, entered the office with an air of ownership, and took the guest chair, not waiting for an invitation.
“Ms. Wickham,” he replied, purposely reminding her of her incredible lack of respect toward a CIA supervisor.
She angled her head and crossed her arms. “There was no money transferred to my account,” she said, her British accent clipping each word. “Tuesday was your deadline.”
He met her deep-brown gaze, enhanced by expertly applied makeup and a fringe of lashes so thick they had to be fake. A shocking contrast to her eyes, her hair was nearly platinum, always stick-straight and loose over her shoulders. The color accentuated olive-toned skin and angular, stark features. Her nose had a bump that would be a flaw on anyone else, but somehow gave her an air of a noble patrician, and her teeth were so white and perfect they reminded him of a toothpaste commercial.
He didn’t consider her a beautiful woman, but certainly an arresting one. And a cold one. So icy a man’s dick would turn into a Popsicle if it found its way inside her.
Cold and calculating, as she’d proven when she’d cornered him with her suspicions about his secret activities and private reports. That’s when Lila Wickham went from low-level MI6 agent brought over from London to work on a joint task force to Roger Drummand’s personal nightmare.
“I need some more time.” He looked down at the files, hoping she’d take it as a dismissal, but of course he didn’t call the shots with her. The balance of power had completely shifted to her when she uncovered what he’d so desperately tried to hide.
“Well, you don’t have much. I’ve got an appointment with your father, and I think it’s time to share some of my thoughts about a certain rogue program that never really died.” She looked down and casually brushed one of her black-painted fingernails. “He’d be very interested in the idea of taking hardened, deadly terrorists and calling them ‘ancillary agents’ and placing them in key locations in the United States on the off chance they identify cells.”
“If such a program existed,” he said pointedly, banking on the fact that she, so far, hadn’t shown him actual proof of his activities. “And if it worked, yes, my father and the entire agency would be quite happy to take the credit for stopping a terrorist attack on US soil.”
She gave a chilling smile. “But if one of those terrorists-turned-spies were to, say, go missing and stop reporting and decide to walk through a mall or a packed stadium wearing a bomb, then the world, and William Drummand, would not be so proud of our, or your, secret program. Would they, Roger?”