All The Queen's Men cs-2 Read online

  With only a single hook latched, anyone with a credit card, knife, or any other thin object could slip it in the crack and force the hook up, freeing it from the eye. With two hooks, one upside down, that method wouldn't work. If you slid the credit card up from the bottom, you hit the upside down latch and pushed the hook into the eye, instead of out of it. If you came down from the top, you were pushing down on the upper latch, with the same results.

  Of course, someone who was very strong or who had a battering ram could knock the door off its hinges, but that wasn't a very quiet way of breaking and entering. She was inordinately pleased that her simple solution had stymied him.

  When they left the house, instead of turning right, toward the park, Medina turned left.

  "The park's in the other direction," Niema said as she caught up and fell into step beside him.

  "We ran there yesterday."

  "Does this mean you never run the same route twice, or just that you're easily bored?"

  "Bored," he said easily. "I have the attention span of a gnat."

  "Liar."

  His only response was a grin, and they ran in silence then, down the deserted street. There were no stars visible overhead, and the weather felt damp, as if it might rain. Her forearms were a little sore from all that shooting the day before, but other than that she felt great. Her thigh muscles stretched as they ran, and she felt her blood begin to zing through her veins as her heartbeat increased.

  They had been running for half an hour when a car turned a corner onto their street, heading straight for them. It was rolling slow, as if looking for something.

  John looped his right arm around her waist and whirled her behind a tree. She bit back her instinctive cry and barely got her hands out to brace herself before he crushed her against the tree trunk, holding her there with the hard pressure of his body. She saw the dull glint of metal in his left hand. She held her breath and pressed her cheek even harder into the rough bark of the tree.

  "Two men," he said in an almost inaudible whisper, his breath stirring the hair at her temple. "They're probably from the private agency Frank hired."

  "Probably? Don't you know?"

  "No, I don't know your surveillance schedule, and they don't know I'm here. They're probably looking for you since you aren't on your usual route."

  The thought of having a "surveillance schedule" was annoying. Equally annoying was the realization of how many times over the past few years cars had passed by her in the early morning hours and she hadn't thought anything of it, except to watch, with a woman's natural wariness, until the cars had turned the corner and disappeared. She had been so oblivious she was embarrassed. She should have been more alert.

  The bark was scratching her cheek, and her breasts were being crushed. "Ease up," she panted. "You're squashing me."

  He moved about an inch, but it helped. He remained behind the tree until the car was a block away, then lifted himself away from her. She grunted as she pushed away from the tree. "If they're ours, why don't we just let them see us?"

  He resumed his steady stride, and she took up her place beside him. "Because I'm not positive they're ours, for one thing. For another, I don't want them to see me, much less see me with you."

  "Some bodyguards they are anyway," she grumbled, "letting you break into my house two mornings in a row."

  "They weren't there when I arrived. They must be on a drive-by."

  "Why don't you just tell Mr. Vinay to call off the surveillance for now? That would be the most logical thing to do. Then, if anyone drove by, we'd know they aren't ours."

  "I may do that."

  The car must have just circled the block. It turned onto the street again. "Pretend to chase me and let's see if they'll shoot you," Niema said, and put on a burst of speed, knowing the car's headlights couldn't yet pick her out. She barely contained a giggle at Medina's soft curse behind her. She had taken three steps when a heavy weight hit her in the back and two arms wrapped around her, dragging her down. They landed on the soft grass beside the sidewalk, with her on her stomach and him on top of her. In the pre-dawn darkness, no one was likely to see them unless they were moving.

  He held her down, despite her wriggles and erupting giggles, until the car had passed by again. "You little witch," he said breathlessly, as if he were trying to hold back his own laughter. "Are you trying to get me killed?"

  "Just keeping you on your toes, Medina."

  "On my belly is more like it," he grumbled, climbing to his feet and hauling her upright. "What if someone looked out their window and called the cops?"

  "We'd be long gone. And if we weren't, I'd just say I stumbled and you tried to catch me. No problem."

  "I hope you're having fun," he growled. A little startled, she realized she was having fun. For the first time in a long while she felt as if there was some purpose to her life, as if she had something important to do. No matter how interesting her work with surveillance devices was, benchtesting circuits didn't give her a kick.

  But she felt alive now, rejuvenated, as if she had been existing in some sort of half-life for the past five years. She had kept up her running all this time, but until yesterday she hadn't been aware of the workings of her muscles, the pumping of her blood. She enjoyed sparring with Medina, both verbally and physically. She wasn't a gun fanatic, but she had also enjoyed learning about the different handguns, learning how they felt in her hand, learning her own limits and then stretching those limits. She wanted to know more, do more, be more.

  This was the danger of fieldwork. She had known the lure, resisted it for five years, but now the excitement was flowing through her veins like a potent drug. She didn't know whether to hate Medina or thank him for dragging her back into this.

  Was five years' penance enough? Would a hundred years be enough to empty the guilt and anguish she felt over Dallas? Her stride faltered as she thought of the times they had jogged together; afterward they had showered together, then fallen into bed and made love.

  Would Dallas have been attracted to the woman she had been for those five years, the woman she had made herself become? Or would he have been bored by the insistence on structure and security, the lack of risk? She was afraid she knew the answer. Dallas had been a risk taker; for all his low-key persona, he'd been a man who thrived on challenge and danger. Why else would he have become a SEAL, then a contract agent? What had attracted him most to her, and she to him, was the instinctive knowledge that they were alike.

  Medina was the same type of man, only more so. Alarm bells, suddenly loud and clear, shrilled in her head. It was one thing to allow herself to be sucked back into the heady world of espionage and contract work, but letting herself develop feelings for another man in that same world was something else entirely.

  She would have to keep her guard up, because emotions could boil over in such high-stress situations. And Medina was an attractive man; more than attractive, really. If he ever let his guard down, he'd be devastating. He seemed relaxed with her, but not once had he let any personal details slip. She knew nothing about him.

  She had already felt warning twinges of physical attraction during the close contact required by training. A woman would have to be dead not to notice that lean, rock-hard body, especially when he was pressed against her.

  Was that why she had teased him about making the surveillance team think he was chasing her, so he would catch her and hold her? In a flash of self-awareness, she realized she had been flirting with him. Uh-oh, she thought. She'd have to be more careful in the future.

  What future? This was a one-time thing, wasn't it? They would work together briefly just this once, then she would return to her safe, familiar job and he would disappear again.

  "Are you ready to pack it in?"

  She glanced at the luminous dial of her wristwatch; they had already been running for over an hour. Luckily they hadn't gone in a straight line, or it would have taken them another hour to get back to her house; they had circled blo