voice, “Now you see why I need you, Kulani. You’ve done the preliminary work on the professor, anyway. You’re familiar with the territory. Only you can do this.” He held his breath.
Over the phone line he heard Kulani sob once. “Damn you, Morgan! I can’t. How could you even think of asking me? It’s just too much.” Her voice cracked. “Too much!”
The phone line went dead. Morgan hissed a curse and gently placed the receiver back in the cradle. Kulani’s cry squeezed his heart. Only the sound of Laura’s tears could make him feel worse. And now he’d wounded Kulani—again. On purpose, though his motives had been pure. Patriotic. So many lives were at stake. And he needed her. So why did he feel like the worst kind of turncoat son of a bitch?
Looking angrily around the office, Morgan picked up the phone. “Get me Dev Hunter,” he ordered his assistant heavily. “Now, please.”
“Morgan, I hope you’ve called me in for an assignment. I’m bored as hell.” Devlin Hunter stretched his hand toward the big man who sat behind the wooden desk in the secluded office. Perseus, the covert branch of the CIA that Dev worked for and Morgan headed, had gone underground since Morgan, his wife and son had been kidnapped years ago. Instead of being in Washington, D.C., its original “home,” Perseus was now located in a tiny, sleepy community of Philipsburg, Montana.
Morgan grinned sourly and gripped the younger man’s hand. “Oh, I think I have something that will unglue you from your boredom, Dev.” He pointed to a large leather wing chair to the left. “Have a seat.” Morgan noticed that Dev, although casually dressed, still wore designer clothing, as was his penchant. Of the four Hunter brothers, all of whom worked for Perseus, Dev was the clotheshorse among them. Plus, in Morgan’s opinion, Dev was the only one of them with the kind of model-handsome looks that seemed to attract women like bees to honey.
Dev sat down on the edge of the chair, relaxed but alert. Folding his large square hands between his opened thighs, he waited expectantly as Morgan took his seat and opened the file that sat in front of him. Maybe it was Dev’s imagination, but Morgan looked more tired than usual. His black hair, cropped short and always military neat, had more silver at the temples. Despite that, however, Morgan looked just as fit as ever. Dev knew his boss worked out at the gym daily as if he were still in the Marine Corps, which he’d left a long time ago. When Dev was between assignments, he ran five miles with Morgan most mornings along dirt roads in the area, among huge, fragrant Douglas fir.
“I hope it’s a good assignment,” Dev said. “To tell you the truth, I’m getting flabby.” He patted his hard gut with a grin. Dev, too, worked out conscientiously at the underground gym that was available for Perseus employees. Morgan had had a condominium built in Philipsburg to house incoming and outgoing Perseus employees. To the outsider, it looked like a time-share facility for vacationers coming to the magnificent Rocky Mountain area of Montana. Morgan was very good at camouflaging things to protect his people and to protect his own family from global enemies who wanted to see Perseus and everyone associated with it destroyed.
He thumbed through a number of e-mail messages lying near the file, his thick, black-and-silver brows dipped in concentration. His mouth tightened momentarily and then he raised his craggy head and met Dev’s intelligent gaze. On the surface, Dev Hunter looked less the mercenary and more like a Wall Street broker. And he always wore a lopsided grin, the left corner of his mouth slightly hitched upward, as if he knew a joke that no one else did. It wasn’t a sarcastic smile, more one of a playful imp from Ireland. Dev Hunter’s easygoing nature was one of the things Morgan liked about him. And in this forthcoming assignment, Dev’s charm and laid-back personality were going to be tested to the limits—and then some. Morgan wasn’t even sure Hunter would take the assignment, but he was prepared to apply a lot of pressure on him to do so. Inhaling deeply, Morgan considered his words carefully. He knew that, in order to get Hunter lured into the assignment, presentation was everything. Morgan prided himself on knowing his people—what snagged their attention, what connected with their passion in life, what made them want to undertake a mission.
“Take a look at this,” he told Dev in a casual tone as he picked up a color photograph and handed to him.
Frowning, Dev took the large photo. “Hey, this is some looker,” he rasped as he sat back, his gaze riveted on the picture. It showed a woman in a Hawaiian grass skirt and a bright red halter top, her wrists and ankles surrounded by garlands of pale pink plumeria, her arms raised skyward as she swayed gracefully on a golden beach, the deep blue of the Pacific Ocean behind her. Her black hair, shining with blue highlights, was encircled with a wreath of white plumeria and greenery, which set off her dusky gold complexion and warm black eyes. Her gaze, too, was turned heavenward, her full lips, a ripe pink color, parted, as if she were caught up in some sacred dance with the spirits of nature and the mighty, placid blue ocean that lovingly framed her.
Dev’s gaze moved in appreciation over her tall, lithe body. One of her knees peeked out from the grass skirt, parting the yellowish strands and displaying her long calf and delicate bare foot. Her exquisitely long fingers curved upward in honor of the sky she danced beneath. Her arms, firm and slender, arced gracefully above her head, as if in tribute to the golden sun that embraced her. She was small breasted, her torso long and her hips slender beneath the flowing grass skirt.
As his gaze moved to her face, he felt a wrenching in his chest. That caught him off guard. Hunter was used to being around attractive women. He drew them like sunlight opened flowers. It was his gift, he supposed. Certainly, his other brothers did not possess the charisma he had with women. But something about this woman moved him as no one had before. He studied her features—the square face with high cheekbones, the dark black brows arching above her wide, shining eyes. Everything about her shouted of aristocracy, from the fine thin nose to the confident way she held herself as she danced the hula. Dev had been to Hawaii a number of times, and because of his curiosity about other cultures, he’d learned quite a bit about the traditional dance. It was a sacred custom among the Hawaiian people, not the touristy thing that visitors thought it was. And there was no doubt the woman dancing in this photo was moving in a deeply sacred communion with the unseen.
Releasing a low whistle, he raised his chin and pinned Morgan with his gaze. “Tell me she’s my mission.”
Smiling a little, Morgan said, “She’s half of it.”
Dev sat up expectantly. His hands tingled as he held the photo, and he was amazed once again at his reaction to the woman pictured there. She looked like an ancient Hawaiian princess—or maybe the daughter of the fire goddess, Pele. “Okay…you got my attention. Is she my tango?”
Morgan smiled to himself. Tango, a military term that meant target, was used to identify the person a mercenary would be protecting. “No,” he said slowly, “she’s your partner.” Steeling himself, he saw Dev’s expression go first, to surprise and then to mild shock before he set his jaw firmly. Hunter was a loner among the elite personnel of Perseus; he didn’t work with a partner. He never had—until now.
Glancing briefly down at the photo, Dev bit back an automatic “No.” He knew Morgan too well, and he sensed his boss was trying to trap him into taking the mission by showing him an incredibly beautiful woman. Morgan knew a pretty face was Dev’s Achille’s heel. Anger sparked within Dev and tension ran through him momentarily. Yet, as he looked at the photo, those shining eyes filled with such life and awe, he found his anger dissolving. That shook him. No woman had ever had that kind of hold on him. He took that back—one had, but not to this powerful degree at first glance—and that relationship had ended up in a disaster of untold proportions that haunted him to this moment.
“What’s her name?” he demanded gruffly.
Morgan was surprised. He’d expected Hunter to instantly put up a fight and flatly turn down the assignment. Something must have captured his attention. Smiling to himself, Morgan answered, “Kulani Dawson.”
“Kulani…” Dev muttered, more to himself than to Morgan. He repeated the name over and over in his mind. The funny thing was, his heart pounded a little bit every time the word spun through the halls of his mind. Was he just having