his real name.” Sam shook her head. She’d been kicking herself for that ever since. But who could think standing next to David Moretti?
“That was probably a good move actually,” Brant said. “Cavanaugh will have him investigated prior to the party. He wouldn’t let a complete stranger inside his compound. If he caught us in a lie, it would jeopardize the whole operation.”
A moment of silence passed, then Carly turned to David. “You think your brother could handle this?”
“He could, but he won’t. It’s not what he does. He escorts businessmen in politically unstable areas. He navigates the hot spots, retrieves kidnap victims, that kind of thing.” He hesitated.
“And?” Brant was asking. “This is not about preferences.” He paused for a moment. “I just received the latest report an hour ago, didn’t want to mention it until I had a chance for another look and a more careful analysis, but there is so much bustle in terrorist circles, the lines are glowing. Monies are moving, human resources are being re-shuffled. We’ve never seen this much activity.” He paused again. “Not even before 9/11.”
“Something major is about to go down,” Nick picked up where Brant had left off. “Since Tsernyakov rules the illegal-weapons market, chances are he’s in on it. If we can get to him, we might be able to stop whatever is about to happen.”
And Cavanaugh was their only link to Tsernyakov. Cavanaugh, who had just invited her to spend a week at his house. Everything rode on her. Odd doubts surfaced, one after the other. What if she wasn’t equal to the task?
At the beginning, she had taken the deal without much thought because it got her out of prison, and to show them all that she wasn’t scared of anything. But as she’d gotten to know the others over the past months, it was becoming more and more important not to let them down. She wanted to get Tsernyakov, for the team, and for herself, too, to prove that she could do something right for once.
“So, David, how about Reese?” Brant asked. “Without telling him everything, of course. Strictly on a need-to-know basis.”
“I’ll attempt to persuade him. However, the last time I requested a favor from him it turned out rather unfavorably. He was guarding one of my clients prior to court testimony and she allegedly shot him in the back. I don’t believe I can convince him to discard whatever he’s working on to come and bail me out again.”
“What’s a bullet in the back between brothers?” Gina joked.
David shook his head. “His exact words were, Never again. You don’t even have to ask.”
THERE WAS a wide-eyed wildness under her polite veneer. He wouldn’t have minded being the one who tamed her and broke her in. All four women at Savall, Ltd. were stunning—a superb combination with their lack of moral sensibility that was guaranteed by their records, ex-cons the lot of them. Their business was growing by leaps and bounds.
Samantha had something special about her that made her stand out from the others, however, and it wouldn’t let him rest, had grabbed him from the beginning. She had such an abundance of nervous energy humming through her. She was forever in motion.
Cavanaugh sat behind his desk and pictured harnessing Samantha Hanley’s energies for his own purposes. He didn’t care about the guy she’d been with. If anything, he added to the challenge. Rivals didn’t scare him, inside or outside of business.
Moretti was her lover at the moment, he was pretty sure. He’d picked up on some odd vibes between the two. They had that look of the guilty, especially Samantha, of people caught at something they shouldn’t have been doing.
He was an attorney. A crooked one if he was close to the women. Cavanaugh would bet a kilo of the best cheese he had flown in from Paris that morning that Moretti was in on the money laundering.
Everyone could always use another shady lawyer. Moretti could come in handy yet. He didn’t need to know if Samantha made a few detours to the party host’s bed.
And she would, Cavanaugh was pretty sure of that. Women always gravitated to the most powerful man in any group. It was part of their genetic conditioning, part of the primal program that ran in their DNA. A splendid bit of biology he regularly took advantage of.
“Last van just left,” Roberto said as he came through the door. Without knocking.
Cavanaugh shrugged off the moment of annoyance. The man was all brawn but little social sensibility. Any attempt to teach him the finer points of polite behavior and manners were a waste of energy. “Good. Make sure the place is cleaned up. We have visitors coming.”
“Sure, boss.”
“Anything else?”
“That’s it.”
“I’m ready for my lunch to be sent up,” he said and the man disappeared the next second—miracle of miracles, closing the door behind him.
He signed into one of his many bank accounts he kept under assumed names and filled out the online form to wire money to one of the many front businesses that, in a convoluted way, belonged to Tsernyakov. That one could be dangerous if he didn’t get his full cut of the business and on time. People in his organization who didn’t perform to expectations tended to disappear.
A few clicks on the keyboard concluded that business.
Cavanaugh leaned back in his chair, his lips pressed together. Having to give away his money always left a bad taste in his mouth. He shrugged it off and went back to thinking about Samantha Hanley in his bed, a much more pleasant topic.
SAM STOOD by her dresser and listened to the noises in the living room. Reese Moretti was making up the couch for himself. She’d never had a man in her apartment before. Up until a few weeks ago, she’d never had an apartment.
She took a deep breath and walked out with the pillow and blanket she was holding. Better do it before she lost her nerve.
“Here.” She held out the bedding and gestured toward the couch. “Sorry, it’s the best I can do.”
All the women on the team got one-bedroom apartments. It hadn’t seemed necessary to spring for more. They spent most of their time at the office or snooping around at the various business functions the island’s elite hosted, trying to figure out who else might be doing business with Tsernyakov. The man had money coming to the island through a maze of channels. They couldn’t just sit back now that they had Cavanaugh. With a guy like Tsernyakov, one needed many backup plans.
“The powder room is all yours,” she said, not mentioning the obvious, that to shower he would need to use her bathroom. She’d spent an hour that morning cleaning it.
She hadn’t grown up in an orderly environment and at times had trouble remembering to put things away. She was improving, though. And she had paid special attention for Reese Moretti’s sake.
The idea was for the two of them to spend as much time together as possible, since, in twenty-four hours, they would have to sell Cavanaugh on the idea that they were romantically linked. That made her more nervous than the rest of the mission put together. They needed to get to know each other and become comfortable with the situation in a hurry.
“Thanks.” He glanced up, looking just like David, and yet different in so many ways. He tested the couch, wearing the same grim expression as he had since his arrival a couple of hours ago—one of the many differences between the twins. David didn’t do grim.
The azure-blue Naugahyde monster that came with the apartment was hard as a chunk of sidewalk. “Sorry,” she said again.
“Don’t sweat it. I just spent a month sleeping in the bush in Africa.”
She couldn’t picture David, always dressed in some sleek silk suit, say anything like that. “Under a bush?” She’d spent plenty of nights on the street; she could sympathize.
But he shook his head with a semiamused look. “In the bush. It’s