It was a reunion of souls. Warmth and wine, friend and colleague. They blended and became simply man and woman. The kiss deepened and they drank of one another, feasting upon the joy of their discovery. Eventually Amanda took a breath as Taylor lifted his mouth from hers.
He lifted her in his arms and she felt as light as dandelion fluff. The room spun slowly in a kaleidoscope of passion-tinted hues. Mouths and tongues fused again in a heated dance that spiraled ever faster around them, leaving her dizzy and gasping for breath. Taylor strode to the sofa and carried her down to it, following after her. She sank into the soft cushions, covered by his big, warm body.
Amanda gripped his shoulders with desperate intensity as the limits of her universe stretched and expanded to encompass this realm of sensation. To hell with living like a machine. It was a stupid idea, anyway. And then the second part of her father’s axiom popped into her head. She tensed.
Taylor lifted his head immediately. “What is it?”
She shook her head. “Something my father used to say. He used to tell me that to stay alive I had to become a machine. I had to live without feeling or else my emotions would be used against me as a weapon.”
Taylor sighed. He pressed up and away from her and shifted to sitting on the couch beside her. His arm came around her shoulders and he tucked her against his side. He was silent for a moment and then asked, “What happened to your mother? Was she really killed in a car accident?”
Amanda blinked at the shift of topic. “As far as I know.”
A pause. “Not to be insensitive to your loss, but based on your father’s opinion of the danger of emotions, is there any chance it wasn’t an accident and your mother was actually murdered? He was a spy, after all. What if he was discovered and somebody took out your mother to get at him? Maybe your father wasn’t so paranoid, after all.”
She blinked, stunned at Taylor’s logic.
“Is the loss of his beloved wife what sent him over the edge into madness?”
She nodded.
He said slowly, “So somewhere deep in your mind, you believe that your parents’ love for each other cost you both of them. No wonder you want nothing to do with love.”
His words shocked her into utter stillness. No. She shunned love because her work required total concentration. Because emotions distracted a person. Because she traveled constantly and had no stability in her life. Because she was afraid of it.
Taylor remarked into the vacuum of her dismay, “There’s nothing wrong with you bottling up emotions you perceived as dangerous. It was a perfectly logical response to your loss.”
She frowned. “But if I can’t love, I’m broken.”
Taylor sighed. “Amanda, Amanda. You’re not broken. Rejecting emotion was a predictable, normal self-defense mechanism. You just didn’t give it up when it outgrew its usefulness.”
“I don’t know. This past week I’ve gotten the feeling I’m outgrowing the notion pretty fast.”
He grinned and said lightly, “I’m a pretty lovable guy, huh?”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t you go and cop a big, macho attitude on me, Romeo.”
Taylor laughed. “Not a chance. You’d kick my butt and hand it to me on a platter.”
She pushed up against his chest. “Speaking of platters, your dinner’s getting cold.”
He dropped a kiss on the end of her nose and stood up, escorting her to the table. She lifted the lids off the plates while he poured wine. Moonlight streamed in the window and a warm breeze fluttered the gauze curtains. A soul-deep relaxation came over Amanda, the sort of unwinding she hadn’t experienced in years. Taylor sat down across from her. He took a bite of supper and sighed in pleasure. “This is delicious. What kind of fish is it?”
She smiled. “It’s sea bass. They call it corvina down here.” She joined him in consuming the delicately flavored fish.
They were lingering over a desert of sumptuous mocha mousse when she finally asked, “So, Taylor. Why did you come down here?”
He paused, no doubt considering the multiple layers within her question. “First, if you needed me, I wasn’t going to let you down.”
The glow that had been building through supper expanded even more within her.
He continued, “Second, we got tangled up in the middle of something huge, and Devereaux got bullied into pulling us out of it. That makes me real curious. I hate not knowing what’s happening or why. Third and most important, someone tried to kill you and we don’t know who it was. That person is still out there. I’m worried about you.”
She savored the idea that he was worried about her. “What do you propose we do about all of the above?” she asked.
He responded with a question of his own. “What are the options?”
“Well, we could bag it all, take my pension from Devereaux and go live somewhere comfortable and remote for the rest of our days.”
He shook his head in the negative. “I don’t like the idea of leaving someone out there on the loose who’s gunning for you.”
She continued, “Well, we could drop the case like everyone wants us to and go on to the next project Devereaux has for us. Or we can ignore what everyone’s telling us and press on with this investigation. The downside of that is we’ll be on our own. We’ll likely get little or no assistance from Devereaux and no protection from our government.”
He said dryly, “I don’t think our government was planning on protecting us much, anyway. From what Harry said, I gather Uncle Sam was prepared to let us rot in Mexico for a good long time before they came to the rescue. I say we press on.”
She looked at him intently. “Are you sure about this? It could get dangerous.”
He shrugged. “We’ve already been followed, shot at, and kidnapped. How much more dangerous could it get?”
She answered with the voice of long experience. “A lot more dangerous. If I’ve learned one thing in this business, it’s that just when you think things have gotten as bad as they can possibly get, they can always get worse.”
“Fair enough. But I’m still game. I still want answers to my questions.”
“Like what?” she asked.
“Well, obviously, I want to know what the deal with the diamonds is. Why’s the U.S. government protecting Four Eyes, whom we know to be a diamond smuggler and arms dealer? Who’s he working for? And who’s trying to kill you? Are the two related? Why did Devereaux drop your father’s journal into the mix, and what’s the connection with it to everything? Why did he go to so much trouble to get me on this case, when you and I both know I’m not even the slightest bit qualified to be out here in the field?”
“Don’t sell yourself short, Taylor. You’ve done remarkably well given how little experience you have. But you are right. We do have to rectify your lack of preparation for this before we go any further. I refuse to endanger your life needlessly. I’d like to beef up your basic skills a bit more. Get you comfortable with sharpshooting and make sure you’re well versed in infiltration and escape. The training course Devereaux puts his people through is good, but I have a suspicion this case is going to demand more of both of us than a basic black-ops course covers.”
In point of fact, it was his mind-set she was most concerned about and not his technical skills. She needed him ready, willing, and able to commit violence at the drop of a hat if it was required.
He frowned. “It’s not like we’ve got a world of time on our hands, here, or the facilities to practice black-ops work.”
She shrugged. “I’ve already covered the facilities bit. As for time, tomorrow is soon enough to get started on your advanced training.”
He pushed back from the table. “Care to step outside and enjoy the evening air?”
She smiled and rose to join him. “I’d love to.”
They strolled outside and went to lean on the rail at the far edge of the terrace. The view at their feet was spectacular, and the sweet scent of honeysuckle perfumed the air. She murmured, “In a setting like this, it seems ridiculous to consider going back into the trenches and picking up this case.”
He looked down at her earnestly. “Yes, but do you really want to live in a gilded cage, always in fear for your life?”
She sighed. “No. You’re right. We need to put this mess to rest once and for all.”
They stood there for several minutes in silence. Crickets and frogs fought to be loudest in the dark, and she let their chorus wash over her. Taylor broke the silence by asking quietly, “Who is Devereaux, exactly?”
“As far as I know, Devereaux is a private citizen with great wealth and power. After terrorism reared its ugly head in a big way, my guess is he decided that legitimate governments weren’t going to be able to fight fire with fire. He struck out on his own to combat what he perceives as the evils threatening the world today.”
“Is he one of the good guys?”
She shrugged. “It depends on how you’d label meeting force with force. He takes the fight to bad guys, most certainly, but his methods aren’t lily-white and pure by any means. I have no idea what his other operatives are up to. For all I know, they could be out there assassinating world leaders. He keeps his operatives totally separate as a rule. That’s part of why I was so surprised when you were brought onto this case with me.”
“What do you know about Devereaux personally?”
“Nothing. The few folks I know who’ve ever spoken to Devereaux use the term ‘he’. He shrouds himself in mystery. Probably is so rich he has to be invisible—otherwise he’d be the target of every tabloid, political cause, business venture, and quack out there.”
“Will he come after us if we pursue this case on our own?”
She shook her head. “He put us on it in the first place. I’m sure he’ll help us as much as he’s able to, depending on how closely the U.S. government is watching him.”
“So all we have to worry about is whoever’s trying to kill you and whoever’s going to want to stop us from finding the source of Four Eyes’s diamonds.”
She replied, “I’d agree with that assessment.”
“Just out of curiosity,” Taylor asked, “why did you come down here? What’s your motive in pursuing this investigation?”
“You mean besides wanting to know why in the bloody hell Devereaux dropped my father’s diary in my lap?” she asked dryly.
“There is that,” he replied equally dryly.
“After this case, Devereaux was going to stand me down. He thought I was losing the edge. I suppose I’m out to prove that I’m not crazy and I can still get the job done.”
“Are you crazy?” Taylor asked matter-of-factly.
Her gaze snapped to his. “You’re the shrink. You tell me.”
He was silent a long time, and her heart pounded as she waited for his answer. Suddenly, it was important to her to know what he thought. More to the point, to know that he thought she was okay. Why did his opinion matter so much to her? It shouldn’t.
Finally, he turned his head and gazed at her steadily, his expression giving away nothing. “It doesn’t matter what I think. You’re determined to see this case through or you’d never have passed me that phone number.”
Her expectations deflated. Psychobabble double-talk. He wasn’t going to give her a straight answer. Damn him. “Tell me something, Taylor. Do you think you have it in you to kill someone in cold blood?”
He jerked. “Why would you ask me something like that?”
Why would she, indeed? Maybe she had an impulse to hurt him, to punish him for withholding his opinion of her state of mind. “It may come down to that in this investigation. I need to know if you’ll have what it takes when the chips are down.”
“Killing in self-defense is one thing. I did that back at the hacienda without thinking twice about it. The bastards were shooting at us and it was kill or be killed. Not a hard choice. But cutting someone down in cold blood—I don’t see us needing to do that.”
She replied quietly, “I’m warning you, it’s a choice you’re going to end up having to face. Sooner or later, you’re going to come up against a pro who’s out to kill you, and you’re going to have to make a preemptive strike. If you hesitate in that moment, you’re a dead man. Mark my words.”
“So noted,” he bit out.
A tense silence settled around them.
Amanda sighed. “Promise me one thing.”
“What?”
“If you discover you don’t have the stomach for this kind of work, you’ll quit. Be honest with yourself and with me and walk away before you get us both killed.”
He nodded decisively. “Deal. So, what do we do first?”
Amanda laughed with scant humor. “Relax. Getting you up to speed isn’t going to happen overnight. I’ll see you tomorrow at, say, one o’clock? I’ve got a few errands to take care of in the morning.”
“I’ll be here.”
“Until tomorrow, then.” She went into the second bedroom, and closed the door.
At one o’clock sharp the next afternoon, Amanda returned to their suite. At her orders, Taylor picked out a half-dozen different shirts and followed her to the parking lot with them. They rode in a bright green Jeep to a high-rise apartment building in an affluent district of Acapulco. A short, dapper man answered the door when she rang, his aging face lighting up with a grin for her. “Come in. Come in. It has been a long time, querida.” After a hug for her, the man led them into his living room and served them glasses of iced tea damp with condensation.
She chatted with the man for a few moments about his family and the current number of grandchildren, and then she got down to business. “Xavier, I need not one, but two favors from you today.”
“Anything for the daughter of the man who saved my life many times.”
She reached into her purse and pulled out an eight-by-ten photograph of Four Eyes. “We need to know everything you can find out about this man. His name, who he works for, what he’s involved in, where he is now, what brand of cigarette he smokes…everything.”
Xavier took the photo and studied it closely. “I shall digitally enhance it somewhat to remove the graininess from being enlarged, and then I shall see what I can learn. And what is your second request, my dear?”
She smiled. “This one is much easier. My friend Taylor, here, has urgent business abroad of a delicate nature. He needs to be able to travel discreetly. Can you help him with some identification?”
“When were you planning on leaving?” Xavier asked.
“Not for several weeks. Even though our business is urgent, we have about a year’s worth of training to do first, and three to four weeks is about as little time as I can condense it into.”
An hour later Xavier had photographed Taylor in a variety of wigs, makeup and prosthetics to alter his appearance. The lime Jeep was waiting for them when they emerged into the bright afternoon, this time with all their luggage stowed in the back of it. She gave the driver an address, and in ten minutes, they pulled up beside a used but solid Land Rover in a parking garage. A quick exchange of suitcases into the new car, a hefty tip to the Jeep driver and she and Taylor were on their way.
It was after midnight when Amanda turned off the marginally improved dirt road onto an even smaller dirt track. Tall grass rubbed the bottom of their vehicle, and deep potholes made for slow, bone-jarring progress.
Taylor peered ahead dubiously. “This looks pretty deserted. Are you sure you know where you’re going?”
She grinned at him. “Yes. And that’s the idea. We’ll have plenty of privacy.”
The track made several switchbacks as it climbed the side of a steep hill. They rounded a last turn and the track petered out in a small meadow at the summit of the mountain. A sprawling structure that had once been white stood in the center of the grassy expanse. The walls of a long building faced them. Neatly centered in its side was a rusty iron gate.
Amanda angled the Land Rover through the partially open gate and stopped inside a square area overgrown with tall weeds. The courtyard was surrounded by a continuous one-story structure. Directly opposite the gate they had driven through, a two-storied facade belonging to a small chapel broke the tiled roofline of the place. They drove to the left side of the enclosure and pulled up beside the covered walkway that lined the entire courtyard.
Taylor commented, “This place looks like a convent.”
Amanda smiled as she climbed out of the vehicle. “Good guess. It was a monastery. The local Catholic parish still owns it, but it’s been deserted for years. It didn’t take much persuading to get the local priest to lease it to a couple artists for the summer. What’s better, the locals think it’s haunted. A bandito and his gang raided here something like sixty years ago and massacred all the monks for a supposed treasure horde. Nobody ever comes near the place, according to the padre.”
“No kidding?” he remarked. “I always wanted to sleep with a ghost.”
Amanda led him to a heavy wooden door under the walkway and unlocked a shiny new padlock, which looked wildly out of place on the ancient cast-iron hasp. The door squeaked open and they stepped a few feet into the room. She lit a kerosene lamp the padre had told her would be waiting on a table just inside the door. The man had been as good as his word.
Taylor made a face as he looked around. “Let me guess. No electricity.”
“No running water, either,” Amanda announced cheerfully.
He opened his mouth to speak, but rather than let him start complaining, she led him through a makeshift sitting room to a long hallway with monks’ cells off either side of it. The first two had been sparsely furnished into bedrooms.
After they deposited their bags on the beds, Amanda showed Taylor the outbuildings by lantern light. When they stepped inside the cookhouse, which was still in surprisingly good shape, Taylor stared in surprise. Supplies for several weeks were stacked neatly on shelves along the wall.
He looked sharply at her. “When did you arrange all this? Surely the padre didn’t pull all of this together today.”
“Tins is the contingency I mentioned last night. I made some phone calls two days ago before we were flown out of Mexico. I figured you’d want to continue with the case, and I knew you’d need the additional training.”
Taylor frowned. “Am I really that predictable?”
She grinned. “Don’t knock it. I have a special appreciation for orderly minds.” After her father in his final years, Taylor could have no idea just how fervently she meant that. She headed back for the living quarters. “How about if I show you the rest tomorrow? I’m beat.”
“Great idea,” he agreed.
Amanda waded across the dew-covered courtyard, and headed directly for bed. The windowless cell cum bedroom was pitch black and only the faint sound of chirping crickets reached her. She lay there, completely relaxed, and was not aware that she had fallen asleep until she woke many hours later to a loud creaking noise accompanied by cursing. Curious, she got up, dressed, and stepped out into the main courtyard. Bright sunlight assaulted her eyes, but squinting hard, she made out Taylor working on a large, rusty well pump. The handle was moving ever so slowly, each down stroke accompanied by an enormous squeak of protest from the ancient well. She strolled over to observe the epic struggle between man and pump.
Taylor straightened and wiped perspiration off his forehead. “Well, don’t just stand there. Grab on and help me!”
Amanda grasped the handle above his hands, and between them the accumulated rust slowly relinquished its hold. It felt good to be out in the morning sunshine, watching it glint off the sable highlights in his hair. Their combined effort was eventually rewarded with a trickle of rusty water into the stone basin beside the well. Several minutes more of vigorous pumping finally saw a clear, cold stream of water pouring forth.
Amanda had just put a bucket under the spout when a golden streak came tearing out of one of the buildings toward them. She dropped to the ground, rolled, and captured the racing creature in a single blur of motion.
A furious, yowling cat struggled in her arms. Scratches sprung up all over her arms before she got the blasted creature by the scruff of the neck. She glared up at Taylor over the feline’s squirming head. “In the first place, help me subdue this damned beast before he mauls me to death. And in the second place, why in the bloody hell didn’t you react to the threat when he came tearing at us? At a minimum you should have assumed some sort of defensive stance. Didn’t you say you had some martial arts training?”
“It was a cat,” Taylor stated flatly. “I didn’t perceive it as a threat—therefore, I didn’t react as if it was one.”
She stood up, holding the furious animal well away from her body. Carefully, she let it go. It took off in a baleful streak of yellow lightning. “Bad guys disguise threats all the time. You’ve got to learn to react to the attack itself, not to what the weapon looks like. I’ve seen pencils that were poison dart guns and fountain pens that were pistols.”
Taylor scowled. “I’ve seen my share of spy movies. I’m fully aware that all kinds of nasties can be disguised as innocent-looking stuff.”
“This isn’t Hollywood. Our necks are on the line here.”
“I get it already,” he grumbled. “Next time, I nail the cat. Can we move on to something else?”
She scowled. “By all means. Follow me.”
Thus began three miserable weeks for both of them. Amanda drove Taylor from the minute they woke up in the morning until he collapsed of exhaustion each night. She pummeled him in hand-to-hand combat, hiked him up and down mountainsides blindfolded, made him fire rifles until she thought she’d permanently go deaf—even with ear protection—and made him learn so much information it felt as if she was pointing a fire hose at him and demanding he drink from it. She rode him constantly to pay attention to the details, anticipate possible complications and to think, think, think.
And all the while, his charismatic presence bombarded her.
All that sweaty brawn couldn’t help but have its effect on Amanda. But it was his mind that drew her in. He was smart. Really smart. A quick learner with a ready sense of humor and a way of cutting straight to the heart of a matter. He had a basic decency about him, an honesty that went soul-deep. He was a good person. So unlike most of the people she came across in her line of work. The insidious attraction she’d had for him since the beginning wormed its way even deeper into her psyche until it became an act of conscious effort to maintain a professional distance from him. She probably drove the poor guy even harder because of it. But good sport that he was, he bucked up under it all and came through like a champ.
And after a couple weeks of sheer misery and grinding frustration for them both, it all started to come together. He started to hold his own when they fought, his shots formed tight clusters on the targets and she started to nod in approval rather than critique his every move. One night after a late supper, she said quietly, “Let’s take a walk.”
Taylor groaned and stood up.
Amanda laughed and retorted, “Not that kind of walk. I’m talking about a stroll. For pleasure. To see the stars.”
“Ah.” He grinned. “Well, in that case, I’d love to.”
The sky glittered with so many points of light that they defied counting. An entire universe was displayed before them. It made her feel infinitesimally small and as vast as the night at the same time. She shivered and was startled when Taylor looped his arm around her shoulders, drawing her close to his warmth. Even though she’d driven him mercilessly the past few weeks, a real camaraderie had developed between them as he came to understand her world and became a part of it.
“You’re ready,” Amanda announced quietly.
Taylor froze. “As in ready to go catch us a diamond smuggler?”
“Well, I thought we’d start with something a little less ambitious than that. My father would have called it giving you your sea legs.”
“What did you have in mind?”
“Before we left Mexico, Harry Trumpman gave me a manila envelope. Made a show of doing it in front of the federal agents.”
“Ah, yes. Now that you mention it, I remember it.”
She explained, “Devereaux gave you and me another assignment, no doubt to convince Uncle Sam that you and I were off the diamond case. It’s straightforward—a small-time drug dealer needs to be shut down. He’s supplying the son of an influential businessmen, and Devereaux’s repaying a favor. I thought we could do the job together.”
“Sounds easy enough,” Taylor remarked.
After the crazy stuff she’d taught him about explosives and assassinations and international espionage, stopping a small time thug probably did sound like a piece of cake. “Great,” she said brightly. “We’ll leave first thing in the morning. Oh, and there’s one other thing.”
He grimaced as if he knew he wasn’t going to like whatever came next. “What’s that?” he asked cautiously.
She took a deep breath and plunged in. “From here on out, I think we’d be better off keeping our relationship strictly professional. It’s going to get pretty hairy over the next few weeks, and I think we both need to keep our minds focused strictly on the case.”
“No deal,” he responded bluntly.
She froze in turn. “I beg your pardon?”
“I said no deal. We’re allowed to define our relationship however we see fit, and I choose to leave open the possibility of there being more than work to it.”
“But,” she sputtered, “but, we’re going to be together around the clock!”
He grinned. “Yup. Lots of opportunity for us to get to know each other even better.”
“But the distraction…”
“Darlin’, I’ve wanted to go to bed with you bad for the last month, and I’d lay odds the same thing’s been on your mind. But it hasn’t stopped us from training like maniacs or concentrating when it was required, now, has it?”
Amanda spluttered, too speechless to even form words. Finally, belatedly, she found her voice. “Taylor!” She threw up her hands. “Why can’t you just be happy with what we have now?”
He answered her question succinctly. “Because I want more. I want it all. With you.”