here before Verdun arrived.
“My car,” he said, looking at his watch so that she would understand he was a man in a hurry.
She felt a surge of sharp regret that the face she had fallen for belonged to a man connected to a villain like Michel Verdun. Then her spy’s practical brain took over. She wondered whether he bought secrets, or sold them. She might, with luck, pick up something interesting from him, and that would be the last of her usefulness to her cousin Hal. Because her work at Michel Verdun et Associés was finished as of tonight.
“All right, I—I’ll just get my bag.” She whirled to run lightly to her desk, as eager to get out of here as the stranger could want. She picked up the items she had tossed on her desk, dumped them back in the drawer.
It took only a second, time which Haroun passed in contemplation of the sloping hips, the firm bare thighs. “Let’s go,” she said, kicking the drawer shut. She had just picked up her bag when she noticed that the secret office door was hanging open. She ran lightly back across the room.
As she reached it, there was the sound of a key in the main door.
Mariel froze, her eyes flying to the stranger. In amazement she saw that he was running silently towards her. He was much bigger than she. He scooped her up in one arm and shoved her through the doorway into the secret office ahead of him. One hand clamping over her mouth, he pushed the door almost shut.
They were in darkness, the only light in the room the glow from the two horrible screen savers flickering on the computers.
His hand tightened over her mouth as the sound of the outer office door opening reached them. “If you make a sound I will strangle you,” the stranger whispered in her ear. Mariel shook her head, her eyes wide, speechlessly promising to be silent, and slowly his hand slipped down to her throat, where it rested in light warning.
A crack of illumination told her that whoever had entered the outer office had put the main light on. It had to be Michel.
Her only hope now was not to be discovered. And clearly Adonis here felt the same. But who was he, then? If he was afraid of Michel, Michel clearly hadn’t given him a key. So how had he got in? And why?
He stood beside her, his body hard, watching through the tiny crack of the door. She could smell the musky scent of him, feel the firm muscles of his arm, his thigh, his chest, as he held her.
“The alarm’s been coded,” she heard a mutter from the outer office. Michel’s voice. Who was he with? She turned in the stranger’s hold and tried to see out the crack. One finger slipped up to her lips in warning.
Probably it was the danger that transmogrified that light brushing of his finger over her mouth into the most erotic thing she had ever experienced. Mariel’s blood raced so that she felt faint. Her body seemed to melt with yearning for the hard curves of the stranger’s body.
His voice rasped in her ear again. “There is your client,” he whispered.
Michel was just coming into her line of vision, moving towards the back corner of the outer office. He hadn’t noticed that the secret office door was ajar, but he would.
“You can go out to him.”
He probably planned to take off in her wake, but the last thing Mariel could do now was walk out and greet Michel. “No,” she whispered desperately, just as another man came into view, his eyes dangerous and wary. “No.”
“No?” The stranger’s gaze narrowed, raking her face in the thread of light in a new assessment.
The second man had a gun. A small, square automatic. Mariel felt as if her eyes were glued to the neat silver barrel in his hand. Beside her, the dark man went still.
“Let them go past. Run for the door. I will follow,” he whispered briefly, and waited only for her answering nod before pushing her to one side.
The armed man was just turning, Michel was facing in the other direction. It was now or never, and as the stranger whipped the door open and launched a kick at the gunman’s elbow, Mariel tore out the doorway behind him and headed for the main entrance.
She heard the kick connect, a shout, and the sounds of struggle. Michel cried out in surprise. Mariel didn’t waste a moment looking back. She wrenched open the door and dashed down the hall.
Behind her there were more shouts, and pounding footsteps. She hit the button summoning the elevators as she ran by, but carried straight on past, heading for the door to the stairwell she had entered by.
She burst through it, then turned to look out. The stranger was pounding down the hall after her, giving her a chance to appreciate his athletic perfection. She opened the door further.
“Ici!” she hissed, and a second later he came bursting through to the small concrete landing. She was already halfway up the steps. “En haut!” she whispered and, not waiting to see how he responded, turned and ran harder than she had ever run in her life.
He was behind and gaining on her. They were halfway up the next flight when they heard someone crash through the door below. They froze, and listened as the others went thundering down the steps to the lower floors.
Mariel breathed a prayer of gratitude, then crept up the last steps and through the door into the fourth-floor hallway. The stranger understood that she was running to a known goal, and wasted no time on questions. She led him to the door marked Toilettes, in and past the basins, and into the last cubicle in the row.
She was up on the windowsill while Haroun was still half wondering if she had led him into a trap after all. But with a flash of thighs she leapt through the window, and he was quick to follow.
“Close it,” she hissed. “And go carefully, this thing is not very safe. Stay a few feet behind me and keep as close as you can to the wall, or it may come down.”
He slid the window down and after giving her a head start followed her along the tottery fire escape, wondering if it would hold his weight. Ahead of him she turned and went down one flight, then paused. To his amazement, though nothing amazed him anymore, she hoisted herself up onto a windowsill.
He caught up with her. “Let us get down to the ground,” he hissed.
“It doesn’t lead anywhere—it’s been destroyed lower down,” she said, swinging her entrancingly naked legs over the sill. He hesitated for a moment. Suppose he had walked into an elaborate setup?
But now he could see that she had told him the truth—the fire escape simply stopped two flights up from the ground. No way to leap that without serious damage.
She had disappeared through the window. Haroun shrugged and, with a murmured “La howlah wa la quwwata illa billah,” followed her into the unknown.
And found himself in a hotel bedroom lighted only by a night-light. She was standing by the bed. A red velour bedspread covered it. She was tossing two red velour pillows onto the floor as he entered. He watched as she tore the bedspread down to the foot of the bed, dragged back the sheets.
Her black leather skirt was slit up both sides, and revealed black lace covering a neatly rounded rump as she bent and twisted, intent on her work.
He could appreciate such insouciant dedication to business, and only regretted that he could not share it. He wanted to get the hell out of here.
But he couldn’t help smiling. He crossed towards the outer door as she straightened. “I wish I could stay,” he murmured, “but unfortunately…”
“Shhh!” she commanded. She now had the bed looking completely ruined, and pushed him out of her way as she crossed to the window. She dragged it shut and turned the little locking mechanism, then drew the curtains.
“Right,” she said. “Now, look—Henri will think you’re my client.”
“Henri?”
“Downstairs, on the desk,” she supplied impatiently. “Can you—” She looked at