Please, make it hold.
“Novaaa!”
Chapter 2
“So, Mr. Cardone, who’s so important you have to fetch him out of the middle of the jungle?”
The Huey’s flight engineer had left her place up front. She perched on the jump seat beside Joe. She’d removed her headset, looping it around the back of her neck, and was yelling over the beating of the chopper blades.
With Costa Rican permission, Joe, the flight engineer, and the Huey’s two pilots had come inland from the USS Reagan, stationed off Costa Rica’s Pacific coast.
“How long until we get there?” he yelled back.
“Ten minutes. You didn’t answer my question. Big secret?”
“Not really. At least who isn’t a secret. Why we want her is.”
“A her? Who is she?”
Joe pictured Nova. Dark black ponytail and bangs, delicate fair skin. Nondescript makeup and a nondescript “look.” That’s how she had struck him the first time he’d seen her. But there was nothing nondescript about those startling emerald-green eyes. He recalled the first time he’d seen her dressed for a seduction for the Company. Man, had he ever been one bowled-over Texas boy. She’d let her straight hair down to her shoulder blades and tucked it back behind one ear. A crimson red gown clung to every mouthwatering body curve. Dangling crystal earrings had glimmered in the ballroom light.
Jesus, she was the most incredible chameleon. Nova could disappear into the woodwork when she needed to, but dressed up she could morph into a movie star or Paris model. Code name: Dove. It fit her perfectly because she seemed so gentle and sweet, someone you could trust. But she was also as tough and professional a spy as he’d ever known.
Well, Nova wasn’t really full-time CIA as he was. A contract agent, Nova served only when she chose to and when called in because one of her special talents or gifts was needed. Sometimes she was called upon because of her beauty, but mostly it was when the Company needed someone with an unsurpassed ability to win trust. Within the inner circles of the agency, she was famous for “spinning silken threads of either trust or desire.” She’d rescued the daughter of an Argentinean diplomat by winning over the hostage taker’s mistress. She’d convinced a Saudi prince that she was a doctoral student studying falconry, and by doing so, obtained information that enabled the Company to prevent the bombing of a disco in Malaysia.
“Nova Blair,” he yelled back to the chopper engineer. “She’s a world-class photographer. Also a tour guide for an action/adventure travel company.” CAT was a legitimate travel company and also a CIA cover, the one Nova used most often.
The flight engineer grinned. “My name’s Katie Donovan. And I’m a damn good dancer. You guys staying on the ship tonight? We’ve got a party planned.”
He gave Katie Donovan one of his better smiles. Quite a few women had complimented him on that smile. “Sorry,” he yelled. “After I get Nova, it’s back to the Reagan to jet off ASAP.”
“I’m sorry, too.” She paused a moment, then, “Does she know you’re coming?”
Now there was a good question. She didn’t. In fact, he’d been told by Langley that since his last job with her, Nova had twice turned down assignments. In Germany, she’d fallen hard for Jean Paul König, a charismatic German politician with the looks of a movie star, but when the mission was over, she’d decided König wasn’t right for her.
In Joe’s opinion, she’d been seriously let down. Hell. He’d caught her with tears in her eyes after making her parting speech to König, and Nova definitely wasn’t the crying type.
He hadn’t pressed her for details. Nova just might be the most private person he’d ever known. And she owned some very deep and dark secrets, some he knew having to do with the stepfather she refused to discuss. Those secrets must be the explanation for why such a beautiful, intelligent, talented woman undertook the dangerous and sometimes murderous things she did for the Company.
He thought it unlikely that Langley knew about her genuine affection for König. He wasn’t about to break her confidence and tell them; Nova’s private business was her private business. But the Company was clearly aware that the assignment had put her off working for them. “Look, we need her for this assignment,” he’d been told when his controller had awakened him in his D.C. condo at three-twenty this morning, “and we need her now. You’ll be going to Italy. To the Amalfi Coast.”
“If she’s burnt out, maybe you should get someone else,” he’d replied, pleased that she’d quit Company work, a dangerous business mixed up with the scum of the earth.
“You’ll get your briefing in Italy. Time is of the essence here. The bottom line is that fast and accurate translation is the key, and it may have to be done on-site. For that we have to have someone who can translate and speak fluently in Russian, Italian, Chinese and, of course, English, and who is intimately familiar with the lingo involved in virus research. The Italians don’t have any one person like that. We have Nova, and we’ve told them we’d get her for them.”
He’d been surprised. “Nova knows about viruses?”
Now irritated, the Company man had muttered, “You’ll get your briefing in Italy, Cardone. All you need to know now is that Nova is uniquely qualified, that’s she’s needed urgently for this assignment, and a fucking lot of lives are at stake. I’d say, conservatively, millions of lives. Your job is to get her to do it. Get her involved again for the Company or expect to feel big heat from higher up. All the way higher up.”
Joe yelled to Katie over the helicopter’s racket. “No. She doesn’t know I’m coming. And if she’s like most women, she’ll probably be pissed when I show up.”
Grinning, Katie Donovan tilted her head, eager for his explanation.
“The last time I saw her we were about to spend a nice weekend together when I got called away. The usual thing, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And about the last thing I said to her was that I’d call. I didn’t.”
“Oh yes. You are in big trouble.” Katie used his shoulder for support as she pushed to her feet. He liked it. The feel of a woman’s hand. “We should be about there.” She made her way forward.
He gazed out the starboard door over the rolling sea of green, the earthy-smelling warm wind hitting his face, thinking, Why didn’t I call? He had intended to. But his next assignment kept him fully occupied for the first ten days, and when he finally caught his breath, he remembered how Nova, who was five years older, always treated him like a kid brother.
And König was an urbane sophisticate, quite the opposite of a Texas-ranch-raised, ex-Naval aviator jock. Calling Nova had suddenly struck him as stupid. Besides, they led crazy lives. When could they ever realistically get together? So at first he’d put off calling her, and then finally he’d quit even planning to.
Now he was going to have to pay the price.
But then, maybe not. Nova wouldn’t really have expected a call. What a monumental ego you have, Cardone. She would have assumed that his saying he would call was like a Hollywood producer saying, “We’ll do lunch soon.”
Nova Blair was one woman who wouldn’t be sitting around waiting for some man to call her.
Chapter 3
Nova halted on her traverse line immediately above Robin. The terror-stricken girl was still rotating, but more slowly now. Pale, she was gazing up at Nova.
“You hanging in there?” Nova said, wishing with an aching heart that she could be the scared one, not Robin. “Pun intended,” she said, forcing a reassuring smile.
Robin actually smiled back, but with thin, white lips. “Yep, ha-hanging in there.”