“And it’s not in yours? Honey, I can smell the desire on you. I can taste it. Hell, your entire body’s humming with it. Your control has been superhuman. And, frankly, so has mine. Now that we’ve proven we can resist this thing between us, don’t you think it’s time to see what happens when we give in to it?”
That made her laugh. “I give up. Your argument is impeccable.”
Thank God. He wasted no time heading for the new car the folks at the H.O.T. Watch had arranged for that morning. The drive back to the hotel was quiet. Kat sat, lost in thought. Hopefully, she was pondering which sexy little thing she was coming to bed in. He was just grateful that the awful tension of waiting was about to be over.
They didn’t have to act to race through the lobby of the hotel like a pair of impatient lovers. They tumbled into the elevator, falling into each other’s arms before the doors had even finished sliding shut. Only the ding announcing their floor tore them apart, and they took off racing down the hall to their room. He unlocked the door and held it for her with an old-fashioned bow that made her laugh.
She stepped past him into the dark, and as the hall door opened fully, the white sheers billowed into the room on a soft breeze.
Kat dropped into a defensive crouch and spun right, away from the opening. What the hell? He didn’t question her reaction, though. He spun low and left, scanning the living room urgently as his eyes sluggishly adjusted to the dark. She glided on silent feet toward her bedroom door, and he headed for his. What in the world was going on? The room looked deserted. Felt deserted. Not that gut feelings were always reliable. A seasoned operator could fade into the woodwork right in front of you. He proceeded with caution, operating on the assumption that there was an intruder until a thorough search proved otherwise.
A quick glance under the bed was clear. He flung the closet door open and pushed aside all his clothes. Nothing. That left only his bathroom. On the way past his backpack, he pulled out a pistol. Behind the door-clear. Shower-clear. Linen closet-too small to conceal a man, but cleared nonetheless. He’d just started to straighten to his full height when Kat called out sharply from her bedroom.
“In here!”
His heart leaped into his throat. Was she in trouble? The protective instincts of a lion roared through him, and by the time he reached her bedroom door, he was in full kill mode. Nobody was messing with his woman. He burst through the half-closed door, looking around wildly for a target to blow away.
“Easy, Rambo. It’s just a note.”
“A note?” His mind didn’t initially make sense of the word, so frantic was he to make sure she was safe.
“Yes. You know. A piece of paper with words written on it that kids pass back and forth in school without getting caught.”
“What note?”
She pointed at her bed.
He looked, and tucked partially beneath her pillow was an envelope. “Can I turn on the light?”
“I doubt we’ll be able to read the note unless we do,” she replied dryly.
Scowling, he hit the light switch. Bright light flooded the room, and he squinted in its glare.
Kat reached for the envelope and he bit out, “Don’t touch it.”
She looked up, surprised. “You want to treat this as an explosive device?”
“Let’s assume the worst until we check it out.”
She shrugged and moved to her closet. She pulled out a small nylon bag and unzipped it. “Stand back.”
While he stepped back, using the doorframe to block him from direct line of sight of the envelope, she pulled out a handheld meter and passed it over the note.
She announced, “No electronic or magnetic emissions.”
He nodded tersely.
She used a long pair of tweezers to lift the edge of the pillowcase away from the note and pointed a flashlight beneath the eiderdown pillow. “No visible wires,” she called.
“Any fluid stains or visible powder?”
She took out a magnifying glass and shone her flashlight on the envelope for extra illumination. After a minute’s examination, she shook her head. “Nothing. I think it’s just a note.”
“Any writing on the envelope?”
“Nope. It’s plain linen. Cream colored. The kind that might come with personalized stationery.”
“Do you have gloves to pick it up with?”
She glanced over at him. “If this is from who I think it is, he won’t have left any fingerprints on it.”
Jeff stared at her for a blank moment and then his brain finally kicked into gear. The billowing curtains. An open window. And they hadn’t left any open this morning. Only one person he knew of would enter a fifth-floor hotel room through the freaking window. He remarked, “Let’s see what the Ghost has to say to us. This should be interesting.”
Kat picked up the envelope gingerly and opened it. She unfolded a single piece of paper, and he moved to her side swiftly to read over her shoulder.
It wasn’t signed.
She tipped the heavy envelope over and a single Polaroid picture fell out into her hand. It showed a loosely unrolled canvas, its edges frayed like a painting that had been cut out of its frame. The Turner landscape.
Kat frowned. “The Ghost wants to talk to me?”
“So it seems. How’d he find you?”
She shrugged. “He could’ve followed us back to the hotel last night. It wouldn’t be too hard to find out which room a certain petite Asian woman and her male companion are saying in. Heck, he probably knows the names we registered under.”
“Perhaps he’s hoping to find a higher bidder for his prizes.”
Kat shook her head. “I think not. He’d go straight to his contacts in the art world for that.”
“Maybe you scared the hell out of him and he’s looking to negotiate a surrender?”
Again, she shook her head. “He was confident as he jumped those roofs. He was sure of himself and his ability to defeat me until the last moment before we fell.”
Stunned at what she was implying, Jeff asked, “Are you suggesting that he actually could have taken you in that fight if you two hadn’t fallen?” He found the idea of anybody matching her martial skills hard to believe.
Kat shot him an offended look. “He didn’t stand a chance against me. I was trying very hard not to kill him, and that’s why it was taking me a while to put him down.”
He gaped. “You mean you had a chance to take him out and you didn’t do it?”
She drew herself up and replied defensively, “That’s correct.”
“And why not?”
She huffed. “He wasn’t trying to kill me.”
“This isn’t the eighteenth century and your meeting wasn’t with pistols at dawn! Gentlemen’s rules don’t apply to hand-to-hand combat between you and some criminal you’ve been ordered to catch. You’re a soldier, for God’s sake. You’re paid to
She spoke with angry precision. “I have
“So you let our target go because it wouldn’t have been sporting to use all your skills on him.” It wasn’t a question. It was an outraged statement of fact.
He could not believe her! He didn’t even know what articles of the Uniform Code of Military Justice she’d just blasted to smithereens, but he had faith she’d broken a bunch of them. Great. And as her commanding officer, it fell to him to make the charges against her. How in hell was he going to destroy her career-and furthermore, her honor-and salvage anything at all between them?
“Why does he want to talk to me?” Kat repeated, interrupting his furious-and increasingly panicked-train of thought.
“How the hell do I know?” he snapped.
“Focus, Jeff. I need your brainpower, here. We have to decide if I’m going to that gully or not.”
