group?'
Iris nodded. 'Dr.Grinkov pulled several people into a special session yesterday. Nobody seems to know what the focus group was about, but Sandrine seems to have been one of them'
'Well, that's good news, isn't it?'
Iris bit her lip, 'I want to think so. But why wouldn't she have left word for me if she was going to be out of pocket?'
'I don't know' he admitted. 'But if all the others did that, too, I guess it explains all the talk about missing people huh?'
'What about you?' she asked Maddox, changing the subject. 'Did you find out anything while you were playing waiter?'
'I confirmed that Celia Shore was part of this hoodoo.' he answered, 'I think you ought to check in on her tomorrow after all. Maybe she knows something.'
'I thought you said she had amnesia.'
'She remembers everything before the flight here, so surely she knows why she was coming here in the first place.'
'Okay.'
He fell silent a moment, his gaze warm on her cheeks. She didn't look at him, afraid of what she was beginning to feel. 'What's wrong with you'?'
Her head snapped up. 'Excuse me?'
His voice was disarmingly gentle. 'You're obviously in pain, but you said it's not gonna kill you. What is it, then?'
She closed her eyes, 'It's just…pain. Sometimes bad, most of the time bearable. It's worse when I'm under stress.'
Nothing of what she'd just told him was a lie, exactly. She didn't think he was quite ready to hear that most of the pain she felt belonged to the people around her instead of herself, 'I'm actually feeling better at the moment.'
It was true. That unexpected flood of relief she'd felt during the last seconds of her connection with Maddox had eased the twinges and sensations left over from the party.
'I'm glad.'
He put his hand on her bare knee, his fingers warm and slightly callused. Instead of a repeat of the dark emotional pain she usually felt from him, raw, unfettered desire rocketed right to her, stealing her breath.
It wasn't coming from him, she realized. It was coming from her.
His emotions were calm by comparison. Gentleness. Concern, She felt a buzz of something else, a low-level tension that might be a faint echo of her own suddenly rampaging hormones, but his focus seemed to be more noble than carnal.
She rose to get away from him, needing the distance to calm her rattled nerves. She searched for a safe subject to get her mind off the fire licking at her belly.
'I was hoping I'd see the man I ran into at the Tropico tonight at the cocktail party. He said his friend disappeared from the conference, too.'
'Maybe she was part of that focus group, as well.'
She supposed it could be. His spoken concern for his friend had sounded real. But that emptiness-she couldn't shake the memory of that sensation. It was as if he had built a wall around his emotions, hid them so that she couldn't sense anything from him that he didn't want her to feel.
Could he know who she was, what she could do? But how?
'Are you sure he didn't tell you his name?' Maddox asked.
'Positive. But he mentioned his friend's name.' She searched her memory, trying to recall the woman's name he'd mentioned. 'Hana something-'
'There probably couldn't be that many people named Hana registered for the conference.' Maddox noted, pushing to his feet. 'I could check into that part of his story, at least.'
'I'm not sure if they'll just give you information about hotel guests if you ask.' Iris stood to walk him to the door.
'Well, I know ways of-' His words cut off mid-sentence as his gaze fell to the sketchpad on the table by the window. He picked up the pad, his brow furrowed. 'Is this him?'
'Yes. I tried to sketch what I remembered about him.'
'It's a good sketch 'He sounded suddenly distant. 'Can I borrow this?'
'Sure.' She followed him as he strode quickly to the door. 'Do you recognize him?'
He turned at the door to look at her. 'He looks familiar. I'm going to show it around, see if anyone knows him.'
'What about asking about this Hana?'
'I'll do that later.' He was already halfway out the door,
'Maddox?'
He turned, his expression impatient,
'Be careful.'
His dimples made a brief appearance. 'Always am.' Then he was gone, jogging down the corridor and turning the corner out of sight.
When an American citizen needed help in a foreign country, he usually went to the U.S, embassy or consulate. Most of the time, a diplomat worked out whatever problem a tourist might encounter, but for Maddox's purposes, a diplomat was useless. He needed a security guy.
In Mariposa, the Regional Security Officer at the U.S. consulate was an agent in his mid thirties named Nicholas Darcy. The son of a former U.S. diplomat to the United Kingdom, he'd spent the first twenty-two years of his life in London, attending Cambridge University and acquiring a British accent that subsequent years in the United States, training and working as a Diplomatic Security Service agent, had failed to eradicate.
Darcy had been a ladder climber at the DSS from the get-go, annoying his fellow agents in the worst way possible-by being better at his job than anyone else. Still, everyone, including Maddox, had to concede Darcy was damn good at what he did.
Unfortunately, that posed a problem for Maddox. What he needed was a guy who could be enticed to spill his guts for the right amount of money. Nick Darcy didn't fit the bill. But he knew the guy who could tell Maddox what he needed to know' about the bearded man in Iris Browning's sketch.
Part of Darcy's job as RSO entailed the care and feeding of local law enforcement, who provided the RSO and his security staff with the necessary auxiliary support to keep the embassy or consulate safe from outside dangers. Maddox was hoping he'd find the RSO doing a little early-morning public relations work in one of the coffee shops frequented by Mariposa's finest.
Maddox was in luck. At the third diner he tried, he found the tall, dark-haired RSO drinking coffee and sharing a plate of beigtiets with a couple of Sebastian cops. Darcy looked up as Maddox approached, his expression shifting from watchfulness to surprise.
'Heller.'
Maddox smiled at the agent's look of barely veiled dismay. 'Long time, no see, Darcy. Got a minute?'
Darcy's mouth pressed to a thin line of annoyance. In the native island patois, he asked the two local cops to excuse him and motioned for Maddox to join him at the cashier's kiosk. Darcy paid for his breakfast, as well as those of the Sebastian police officers, and led Maddox out into the warm morning air.
'What do you want?' Darcy asked as they walked toward the embassy complex a couple of blocks down the road.
'Information.'
Darcy slanted a hard look at him. 'I'm not in the information business.'
'Of course you are.'Maddox reached into his pocket and pulled out the folded sketch Iris had made the evening before. 'I need you to answer something, for old times' sake.'
Darcy stiffened. 'We weren't mates. Maddox, I don't owe you anything for old times' sake.'
Maddox tamped down the blackness coiling like a snake in his chest, gritting his teeth until the urge to lash out
