least not anyone who’d managed to stay alive long enough to take the witness stand. The calculating bastard lived sequestered on his private island off the Massachusetts coast when he could’ve been someplace warm and inviting and outside of U.S. soil. John was convinced he’d chosen Rocky Cliff Island for spite, so he could laugh at the agents who’d dedicated—and given—their lives in a series of unsuccessful efforts to put him behind bars.
Unsuccessful until now, that is, he thought as he dug through a spare clothes locker, changed into jeans, a U.S.C.G. sweatshirt and thick socks, and grabbed a slightly smaller set of the same for his mysterious guest.
Sydney—if that was really her name at all—might just be the answer to his prayers. Though his gut told him she’d probably been Tiberius’s lover, he’d just tried to kill her. That might be all the leverage John and his people would need to get inside information.
Then again, she could be a clever plant. The possibility meant he’d have to be very, very careful in what he said and did around her.
He knocked on the door to the head. “There’s a set of clothes for you outside the door. I’ll be in the galley when you’re ready.”
A couple of minutes later, right about when the small kitchen space had started to take on the aroma of hot coffee, the door to the washroom opened and Sydney stepped out.
Her towel-dried brunette hair stuck up in tufts here and there, suggesting it would curl later. The borrowed clothes hung off her slight frame, and she’d cuffed the jeans so they wouldn’t drag on the ground. She should’ve looked ridiculous in the too-large pants and sweatshirt. The fact that she didn’t, that she somehow looked as though a fashion designer had chosen the outfit and told her to make it work on the runway, had those warning buzzers going off again in the back of John’s brain, loud and clear.
He stared at her, seeing a drop-dead gorgeous woman beneath shock and saltwater, and thought, Were you his lover? A customer in a deal gone bad? Are you a victim, a perp, or somewhere in between?
As if he’d said the question aloud, she locked eyes with him. “So, Special Agent John Sharpe of the FBI…are you authorized to make a deal?”
SYDNEY SAW THE mental shields come crashing down. One minute he’d been looking at her as though trying to make up his mind about her, and in the next she’d made it for him, because innocent people don’t need deals.
His gorgeous blue eyes blanked and a small, sardonic smile touched the corners of his lips, which were bracketed with small creases that drew her eyes and made her wonder what he’d look like if he smiled—really smiled—at her.
“It depends on what you’re offering,” he said, expression giving away nothing.
She wanted to tell him that she intended to give him everything she knew, that she couldn’t live with herself if Tiberius got away with what he was planning. But she had to be realistic. All she knew about this guy was that he was an FBI agent—she figured she could believe that much, because she highly doubted the coast guard loaned their boats and crew to just anyone. Well, she also knew he’d dried off even handsomer than she’d expected. That wasn’t exactly relevant, but it was certainly a fact.
His hair was a rich, dark brown, thick and wavy. From his square-jawed features and the stress lines carved beside his mouth, she guessed he was in his mid-thirties, a few years older than she. Wearing a gray coast guard sweatshirt, borrowed jeans and thick socks—as she was—he should’ve looked casual. Instead, he exuded that same leadership she’d noticed out on the deck, that same “don’t mess with me” attitude.
On one level she found it comforting. On another, disturbing.
She’d known men like him before, men who would do—and say—anything necessary to achieve their goals if they thought the ends justified the means. Hell, she’d dated one of them—almost been engaged to him—and look where that had gotten her: unemployed and forced to seek an alternative source of funding that had turned out to be far less legitimate than she’d hoped.
Thankfully, this time forewarned is forearmed, she thought grimly.
No doubt Agent Sharpe figured that the end of bringing down a man like Tiberius would justify any means. She, on the other hand, needed to protect not only herself, but also Celeste. To do that, she had to maintain whatever leverage she could get her hands on.
Knowing it, steeling herself to negotiate when her conscience was crying for her to spill every last piece of information on the spot, she stayed silent, waiting for Sharpe to start the negotiations.
Instead, he handed her a cup of coffee and gestured her to the small dining area of the galley, where there was a booth-style table and bench seats.
She sat, blew across the surface of the steaming liquid and took a small sip, welcoming the burn of heat and the bite of caffeine.
He sat down opposite her, and the booth was so cramped that their knees bumped beneath the table while he got himself settled. She moved away, all too aware of his maleness, of the way his aura filled the small space and made her think of how long she’d gone without a man’s touch.
Swallowing through a suddenly tight throat and reminding herself that she needed to tread carefully, she lifted her coffee mug and said, “You’ll find me in the system as soon as you run the prints off this mug—presuming, of course, that’s your plan if I haven’t told you who I am before we reach the U.S.C.G. station at Gloucester.”
She expected the obvious question: why are your prints on file? Instead, he skipped right over that and said, “In other words, you needed government clearance at some point.”
She raised an eyebrow, then winced when the motion pulled at the cut she’d cleaned and bandaged in the bathroom. “You’re assuming I wasn’t arrested.”
Again, his smile held no humor. “Consider it a hunch, based on what I know of Tiberius’s women.”
“I wasn’t his lover.” There was little heat in the denial, though she was tempted to ask why that had been his first guess. She wondered how he saw her, what she looked like to him.
After almost a year of interacting solely with the guards and Tiberius’s people, it seemed suddenly strange to be speaking with a man—a tongue-draggingly handsome man—who wasn’t part of that world.
But that was the point, wasn’t it? He wasn’t entirely out of that world—he was simply on the other side. She wasn’t sure she could trust John Sharpe. She’d trusted Tiberius, and that hadn’t turned out well at all.
“But you’re right that I haven’t been arrested,” she conceded his point. “A few parking tickets and a stern warning for doing sixty in a thirty-five zone outside Bethesda, but that’s it. And yes, I needed government clearance.” She paused, trying to gauge how much to reveal, how much to hold back. Finally, she went with what she figured he could get from her prints and a quick background check. “My name is Sydney Westlake. I’m twenty-eight, my twin sister, Celeste, and I were raised together in foster care and we own a house together in Glen Hills, Maryland. Up until a year ago, I worked in the genetics department of the Advanced Institute of Science in Bethesda, investigating the causes and possible cures for a rare genetic disease called Singer’s syndrome.”
She paused when the boat’s engine note changed and their momentum slowed. There were no windows in the small galley, but she thought she heard the clang of a marker buoy, indicating that they were nearing land.
“What changed a year ago?” Sharpe prompted.
“As you might guess from the fact that I was swimming like hell to get away from Rocky Cliff Island,” she said drily, “I went to work for Tiberius. About a year ago my funding was cut, thanks to my lying rat-bastard of an ex-boyfriend. A few weeks after that happened, a representative of the Tiberius Corporation made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. I’ve been working in a private lab on the island ever since, the last three months of it under lock and key until tonight.”
He’d