Bill Minor rubbed the back of his neck as he left his opulent suite and stepped out into the resort hotel’s hallway. He nodded to the security agent standing before the Domina’s door. Brandon Marsdon nodded back, dark eyes flashing.
Bill padded down the hallway to the elevator and pressed the button. As he waited, he checked his phone for emails or messages. Nothing significant required his attention.
It had been a long day, one filled with phone calls, interrogations, and intelligence reviews. But worst of all had been the oversight conference—an impromptu affair called when Skientia’s president Peter McCoy and Chief Operating Officer Tanner Jackson had flown in without notice.
Bill had been summoned along with Maxine Kaplan, the supervising physicist in charge of the Los Alamos facility, and her right-hand man and engineer, Virgil Wixom.
“We think we have contained most of the trouble General Grazier stirred up,” McCoy had said to open the meeting. “Bill Stevens has unleashed the entire weight of the government to run down Grazier’s team.” He smiled, shaking his head. “It appears he was using—get this—mental patients!”
“Huh?” Bill Minor asked.
“Out of Grantham Barracks, if you can believe it. A team of special investigators is closing in on them as I speak. Dr. Kilgore France remains at large for the moment. Apparently in some place called Mackaweevle, or something. Our people should have her and Dan Murphy within a few days. The operative assumption is that Dr. France is attempting to translate Fluvium’s journal.”
“And that leaves us vulnerable how?” Maxine had asked. Bill always wished he’d known her as a younger woman. Though in her mid-fifties, she still kept herself attractive, slim, and healthy.
McCoy rubbed his fleshy jowls. The guy reminded Minor of a bloodhound: all bones hung with lots of loose skin. Even the man’s somnolent brown eyes added to the effect. Behind the lazy-dog façade lay the sort of avaricious soul that made a hungry shark look warm and fuzzy.
McCoy lived for the kill. As a young man, he’d made his mark on Wall Street, riding the bull right up to January of 2007. At the bottom of the market, he’d invested a billion. Doing so, he’d acquired controlling interests in most of the better R&D firms—the ones that lived on the cutting edge. And having skillfully merged them into the single entity of Skientia, McCoy now perched like a spider in his web. Not only did he have a corner on the best scientific brains in the business, but his personal fortune and political acumen allowed him access to the most rarified hallways in the White House, Capitol, and Pentagon.
Rumor was that he owned Bill Stevens.
Peter McCoy scared Bill Minor. Something about the guy was simply inhuman and cold-blooded.
Tanner Jackson, Skientia’s COO, was another misleading man. He stood five-nine. Bald as a cue ball, his skull was shaped like a potato: long and bulbous at both ends. He wore the most unfashionable black-frame glasses. Rumor had it that he didn’t trust LASIK surgery, even though he owned several companies that manufactured the equipment. With his doughy and pasty-white face, the guy just looked like a dork despite his tailored-in-Milan suits.
Behind the appearance, however, lived a human scorpion and master strategist. Jackson had brought Bill Minor in years ago, recognizing his talents. It had been Jackson’s suggestion to originally retain Talon Group’s services; then, through a shell corporation, Skientia had bought the security firm.
“We’re only vulnerable if Dr. France can convince anyone to believe her story,” Tanner Jackson said absently. “And for her that carries its own risks, since she knows any attempt on her part to publicize her findings would lead us straight to her.”
“Then, what’s her angle?” Maxine wanted to know.
Bill had interjected, “She gets a definite ego-fix from the spotlight, but in the end she’s a sucker for a forensic mystery. My take is that she still thinks Fluvium is a scam, and she’ll do anything in her power to prove it.”
“Good, let her.” McCoy laid a finger along his nose as he thought. “Maxine, where are we on the reengineering of the generator?”
“Based on what Domina has given us, and what we’ve gleaned from the tomb wall inscriptions, we can start running live animal time trials tomorrow night. Domina wants to use the navigator to monitor the initial tests from the forward control pedestal. If we just had that computer she insists Fluvium had . . .”
“Any progress there?” Jackson shot a glance at Bill.
“The two archaeologists have carefully cut sections out of the sarcophagus that will allow them to remove the black powder charges tomorrow morning. If the computer is inside, we’ll have it by noon.”
McCoy noted: “If you locate it, it will be absolutely imperative that Domina does not find out. If she gets her hands on the cerebrum, and it still remains functional, we lose everything.”
“She doesn’t even know the sarcophagus is here.” Minor spread his hands wide, a runny feeling in his gut from the way McCoy was watching him through those too-soft puppy-dog eyes.
“Tell her that we’re running down new leads in Egypt. That it might take a while, but if Fluvium hid the brain, we’ll find it.”
“That’s the plan,” Minor had agreed.
“And the jar containing the red death?” Maxine Kaplan had asked.
“Still missing,” McCoy had grunted. “And for one, I damned well hope that Kilgore France doesn’t decide to just pour it down a drain somewhere.”
“If she does,” Jackson had snorted irritably, “we’d better get a handle on this time machine fast, because we’re going to be in need of a parallel universe pretty darn ricky tick quick.”
The words from the meeting echoing in his head, Bill Minor emerged from the Hilton’s elevator and made his way to the stylish lounge. The place was done up in Southwestern Indian motifs. Mock adobe walls and fake viga logs all hinted of the pueblos, as did the geometric, Navajo-patterned chairs and thick tables.
From long habit, Minor stopped inside the door, letting his eyes run over the tables and occupants. Most of the patrons he placed as upper-middle class to moderately wealthy married couples enjoying vacations or attending the opera.
The two women at the table off to the side, however, were different. Bill Minor always chose a table in the corner. The one he seated himself at not only placed his back to the faux-adobe wall, but let him keep an eye on the entrance, the bartender, and best of all, the two remarkably attractive women at the closest table.
The way the overhead lights sparkled fire in the redhead’s hair matched the devil-may-care grin that crept in around the corners of her mouth. A calculating glint in her green eyes matched the petite lines of her face.
And then there was the tall black-haired, gray-eyed masterpiece across from her. She probably had a couple of inches on Minor, but the way everything matched so proportionally, she was all woman. Fit, too, from what the blouse and tapered black cotton slacks disclosed of her muscular body. She threw her head back and laughed at something the redhead said, then ran fingers through her midnight hair and flipped it over her broad swimmer’s shoulders.
Damn, she had an animal magnetism, and he could imagine himself running his hands down that sleekly muscled body, peeling the slacks from those slim hips . . .
The barmaid stepped up, placed a napkin on the scarred-wood table.
“Black Jack straight up, glass of water back, and a lite beer.”
The two women burst into laughter, glancing at each other. The redhead raked two five-dollar bills to her side of the table, having obviously won a bet.
They bet on my drink order?
He heard the redhead say, “Five bucks says it’s beer.”
“Five for the bourbon,” the raven-haired she-tiger answered and slapped down another five.
The redhead matched from her pile.
God, they are betting on me.
Even as his lips tried to bend into a smile, his innate sense of caution sent a tingle down his spine. It wasn’t like he was on duty, though he remained on call. And it definitely wasn’t like women didn’t notice him. For some the lure lay in his weight-lifter’s physique. Others said they were drawn to his “bad-boy charm.” Still others insisted he came across as irresistibly dangerous. Or that he was “mysteriously male,” whatever that meant.
And some, like Kilgore France, perhaps through innate intelligence, treated him as if he were a coiled cobra.
So, William, you can make one of the lovely ladies five bucks. Which one do you choose?
The fiery and cute redhead with her devilish smile? Or the black-haired Amazon oozing animal magnetism? Which one would he rather undress tonight?
He still hadn’t solved the problem when the barmaid set the drinks on his napkin. He stared down at the amber fluid in the short glass, then at the beer.
The women leaned close, whispering, watching his choice as unobtrusively as possible.
Minor reached out and danced his fingers along the rim of the whiskey glass, then shifted to the beer, and finally lifted the glass of water. He drank a couple of inches down and replaced the glass on the table.
The two women were staring at each other, and before he could react, each tossed another five into the middle of the table.
They upped the ante?
All right. He picked up the whiskey, dumped half into his water glass. Then he poured a couple of fingers of beer into the whiskey, sloshed it around a couple of times, and drank.
The women began chuckling to themselves, aware that he was onto them.
“I’ve been around,” he raised his voice for their benefit, “but no one’s ever bet on what I’d drink before.”
The redhead shifted in her seat to give him a narrow-eyed inspection. “You obviously don’t hang out with competitive women. Keeps us from fighting over the spoils if we know who owns what from the very beginning.”
“Who owns what?” Minor repeated suggestively.
The tigress turned, leaning just as suggestively in her chair; her keen gray eyes fixed on his. “Trust me. You don’t want to know.”
“Cozumel,” the redhead stated. “Carlos ’n Charlie’s. Way too much tequila.”
“I’ve gotta hear this,” Minor told them, giving them his best smile. He had a hunch about what “ownership” implied.
“Cozumel,” the gray-eyed beauty repeated as if it explained everything.
“Too much tequila,” the red fox insisted. She made a gesture with her fingers. “Drink that down. You gotta catch up. It’s not a story for the sober.”
Minor tossed down his mixed whiskey, followed it with beer, and gestured the barmaid for a repeat. “So, I’ll catch up. Name’s Bill Minor. You two here on vacation?”
“Naw. Working.” The redhead was making no apology as she sized him up. “I’m called Win.” She grinned. “Take that however you want to. I fly a helicopter. That Blackhawk back behind the security gate.”
The raven-haired one said, “They call me Chief. We’re doing aerial watershed and timber evaluations for the Forest Service and BLM, mapping pine beetle infestations and vegetation surveys in the old burns. She flies, I lean out and shoot pictures. We’re going to be working around Los Alamos and up to the caldera.”
“Wow, sounds exciting.”
His server placed another bourbon and beer before him. Instinctively, he took a sip of the Jack Daniels, and watched the tall woman slap a hand onto the fives and draw them back.
“I guess I know who’s got dibs, huh?” he asked softly.
“Depends,” she told him with a predatory smile. “The night is young. You’ve got unlimited opportunities to make a mess of things and demonstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt that you don’t deserve our company, let alone mine.”
Oh, if you only knew who you’re dealing with here, sweetie.
She winked and lifted her glass, as if in a toast.
He stretched, extended his glass of bourbon and was just able to clink hers.
“So, what do you do, Bill Minor?” the redhead asked.
“Me? I do a bit of security for one of the labs up at Los Alamos. A sort of contractor. Evaluations. That sort of thing.” For tonight—with the raven-haired sorceress for a potential prize—he could be charming, exotic, and slightly dangerous. Especially if her cat-lithe body held half the charm naked that it promised clothed.
After all, she’d got dibs, right?