Dangerous to Know (3 page)

The younger woman managed not to flinch at the total, although she did turn a little pale and her fingers fumbled with the pen as she signed the traveler's checks.

“Shall I have your packages sent to your hotels, ladies?” the attendant asked.

“Yes,” Maggie replied. “I have more shopping to do yet.”

The real Meredith Ames had indicated that she'd been instructed to stroll the shops that lined Cannes's world-famous boulevard, the Croisette, until the nameless, faceless individual who'd arranged shipment of the stolen technology made contact. Maggie had followed the same routine, secretly delighting in the fact that she'd been
forced
to purchase an item or two to keep up her cover. Still, she'd be glad when she finally made contact and got this mission under way.

“Send my things to the Carlton, suite 16,” she told the attendant.

“I'll take mine with me,” Paige murmured as she stuffed her
traveler's checks into her purse. Gathering up her various bundles, she tugged self-consciously at the back hem of her shorts to make sure the red material covered both cheeks. It did. Barely.

“I haven't found a hotel room yet,” she said with a hesitant smile. “When I do, can I give you a call? Maybe I could buy you lunch sometime, to thank you for all your help.”

“Maybe,” Maggie returned easily, although she had no intention of responding if Paige called. She wasn't about to draw anyone else into the games she'd be playing once the operation swung into high gear.

The tension she'd kept at bay during the interlude in the boutique flickered along her nerves. She should've met her target by now. She'd been in Cannes for six hours, and she'd been strolling the shops off and on for three. The sixth sense that had served her so well during her years with OMEGA told her the contact had to come soon.

“Well, thanks again,” Paige said shyly. “I'd…I'd better go find a hotel.” She flicked an uncertain glance at the front door and tugged once again at the back hem of the shorts.

Maggie hid her amusement at the younger woman's obvious reluctance to step outside in her new, abbreviated look. Slipping a pair of star-shaped sequined sunglasses off the top of her head, she held them out.

“Here. You need a finishing touch. Try these.”

Paige slid on the bright red shades with barely concealed relief.

“Perfect,” Maggie told her, grinning.

An answering smile tugged at the other woman's lips as she glanced at herself in the wall of mirrors behind the rococo desk that served as a sales counter.

“Perfect,” she agreed.

With a rustle of tissue paper and a final farewell, she gathered her bags in one hand, opened the shop door and stepped out into the late-afternoon sunshine.

She was still smiling when she turned left to walk along the palm-lined boulevard.

And when the long, sleek Rolls-Royce slid to a halt beside her.

Her smile slipped a bit when a dark-haired chauffeur stepped out of the car and took her arm.

It disappeared completely when he hustled her toward the rear passenger door.

Watching through the shop's tinted window, Maggie gave a sudden gasp. “Oh, my God!”

She raced for the boutique's door and dashed into the street just as the Rolls merged into the traffic flowing along the Croisette. Before Maggie could catch more than a few numbers on its license tag, it disappeared into the streaming flow.

“Dammit!”

She stood on the sun-washed pavement, her mind racing with a dozen different possibilities. Unfortunately, only one of them made any sense.

Unless she missed her guess, Paige Lawrence had just made the contact Maggie had been waiting for all afternoon!

G
reat! Just great!

Grinding her teeth in frustration, Maggie searched the lanes of traffic for a likely pursuit vehicle. Just as she stepped off the sidewalk, intending to flag down a sleek German sports model, the flow of cars slowed. To her intense disgust, traffic quickly ground to a halt.

She'd seen some horrible traffic snarls in her lifetime, but few to match those of the Croisette. In the short time she'd been in Cannes, she'd discovered that these hopeless backups occurred frequently, usually when carloads of tourists slowed to gawk at the sun-bronzed, topless and often bottomless bathers on the beach.

While she waited with mounting impatience for the tangled, honking vehicles to sort themselves out, half a dozen possible courses of action flitted through her mind, only to be immediately discarded.

Given the sensitivity of her mission, she couldn't involve the local authorities and ask them to track the Rolls for her. Only two French officials at the highest government levels knew
OMEGA operatives were in place on the Riviera. One was the French president himself. The other was the chief of security, who would supply any assistance Maggie might need in-country.

She'd have to work through OMEGA control to extract Paige Lawrence from this situation without compromising her own or Doc's cover. And she had to do it immediately, before the shy, innocent tourist was harmed!

To her intense relief, the traffic began to flow again. Hailing a cruising cab, she flung herself into the back seat and instructed the driver to take her to the Carlton, fast! While the swarthy Mediterranean weaved back and forth across three lanes, gesturing obscenely but good-naturedly at every angry honk, Maggie dug in her purse for her diamond-studded compact. Flipping open the lid, she pressed the square stone in the center of the lid with one finger.

“Doc, do you read me?” she murmured. She doubted the driver would hear her or notice her talking to her own reflection, seeing as he was engaged in a shouting match with a trio of youngsters on motor scooters who seemed to think they had some right to use the road, as well. Just to be authentic, however, she stabbed at her nose with the powdered sponge.

Pressing the stone once again to shift the communications device in the compact's lid into the receiver mode, Maggie waited impatiently for Doc to respond. His own device, an elegant gold cigarette case, would hum with an ultralow-frequency resonance only he could hear until he acknowledged her transmission. While she waited, she searched her mind, trying to remember just where he would be at this moment. He'd given her a detailed schedule to memorize, then destroy. She hoped he hadn't yet left for the international symposium that was providing his cover.

“Doc here,” he replied calmly a few moments later. “Go ahead, Chameleon.”

Maggie threw a quick glance at the cab's rearview mirror. The driver was still too engrossed in his vociferous argument with the teens on the scooters to notice her prolonged preoccupation with powdering her nose.

“Doc, get hold of control, quick. Have Cyrene run a check through the IIN on a silver Rolls, 1991 or '92 make, French tags, the first two digits of which are
74.
”

“Will do.”

That was Doc, Maggie thought with a surge of sheer relief. No questions, no panic. By the time she got back to the Carlton, he'd have all the information immediately available on the owner of the Rolls through the IIN, the International Intelligence Network. And probably have it synthesized into a list of possible connections with all known fiber optics firms in Europe and North America. What was more, Claire would have started a psychological profile on the possible target.

“I'll be back at home base in five minutes. Make that three,” Maggie gasped as the driver swung recklessly across two lanes of traffic, cutting ahead of the motorbikes and a rather large truck in the process. “Meet me in my suite.”

“Roger.”

“Oh, and ask Cyrene to check out an American by the name of Lawrence. Paige Lawrence. I think our friends have just picked her up by mistake.”

Maggie grabbed at the handgrip as the cab swerved around a corner. Righting herself with some effort, she pressed the stone again.

“Doc?”

There was no response. She pressed the transmit button again.

“Doc, did you copy that last transmission?”

“I copied it.”

Frowning, Maggie stared down at the compact. She'd never heard quite that element of savage intensity in Doc's voice before. It was clearly audible, even after being bounced off a communications satellite orbiting some two hundred miles overhead.

“Where are you?” he growled. “Right now.”

Maggie glanced through the windshield. Just ahead, the distinctive twin cupolas of the Carlton rose above a wavy line of palm fronds. Supposedly modeled after the breasts of a gay French mistress of the Prince of Wales—before he became King
Edward VII—the conical domes crowned either end of the hotel's fanciful facade.

“I'm about a half mile from the hotel,” Maggie responded.

“Get the hell up here. Fast! Out.”

She blinked at the abrupt termination, then shrugged and tucked the compact in her bag again. She wasn't any more pleased than Doc at this complication in their mission before it even got started. She only hoped she could extract Paige from this damnable mix-up before the players in this deadly game of industrial espionage discovered they had the wrong woman.

Clenching both hands around her purse, she scooted to the edge of her seat and waited for the driver to sweep to a halt in front of her hotel.

A preposterous, thoroughly marvelous wedding-cake structure, the Carlton had been built just prior to World War I. White-painted bricks set in intricate patterns decorated its caramel-colored facade, and gleaming marble columns rose in majestic splendor at the colonnaded entrance. A stately, liveried doorman marched forward to open her door, but before he reached it, Maggie was already out of the cab and rushing for the entrance.

She thrust a wad of francs into his gloved hand, asked him to take care of the fare and add a substantial tip, and hurried inside. Wrought-iron elevator doors clanged shut behind her as she waited, foot-tapping in impatience, for the old-fashioned cage to take her to the fifth floor. She had barely thrust her room key into the lock when her door flew open and a hard hand yanked her inside.

Years of intense training kicked in immediately. Without thought, without hesitation, Maggie swung at her attacker.

Luckily, Doc had undergone the same training she had. He threw up an arm to deflect her blow just in time, then hauled her inside and slammed the door.

“What in the world—?” she exclaimed in astonishment.

Frustration, and an emotion Maggie couldn't quite identify, blazed in his gray blue eyes as he swept the sitting room. She knew he was searching for a place where they could talk undisturbed. A place where he could be sure they wouldn't be “over
heard” by the anonymous individual who'd reserved this opulent, high-ceilinged suite for Meredith Ames in the first place.

“It's clean,” she told him, still stunned by his uncharacteristic behavior. “I cleared it this morning.”

Using the electronic “sweep” Special Devices had designed to fit into the handle of her hairbrush, Maggie had surreptitiously checked for bugs and hidden cameras when she first arrived.

She'd found one, a sophisticated listening device that she'd foiled with a simple countermeasure. The small gadget looked like a travel clock, and would filter a conversation just enough to make the words indistinguishable. It would also drive any listener batty with the effort to make them out, the chief of Special Devices had informed her smugly.

Doc, however, didn't appear particularly gratified by the knowledge that they could talk in the open.

Although dressed in a conservative business suit of fine gray worsted, his powerful body radiated a fierce, controlled tension as he swung Maggie around to face him. His dark brown hair, gleaming with subtle mahogany tints, lacked its usual neat style. In fact, it looked as though he'd thrust his hand through it. Several times.

“Control is checking the license tag. Claire should get back to us in five minutes or less,” he informed her in a low, ominous voice. “Which means you have exactly four minutes and fifty-nine seconds to tell me just how Paige Lawrence got into the picture. And what do you mean, she got picked up by mistake? By whom? When? Dammit, Maggie, how in the hell did you get her involved in this?”

Maggie took an involuntary step backward as Doc leaned over her. She'd never seen him like this. And she'd never realized just how intimidating he could be when all one hundred and ninety pounds of him emanated a cold, hard fury.

“I didn't get her involved,” she protested. “Well, I did, I suppose, by encouraging her to buy an outfit similar to mine. That must have been what caused the mix-up. That, and our coloring. But…” She craned her neck back and stared up at David in utter perplexity. “But…”

“But what?” he snarled.

Enough was enough. This was her partner, for heaven's sake. She would trust David Jensen with her life. She'd done just that, in fact, one hot, muggy night in Malaysia, two years ago.

“But what's with this ‘Paige' business?” she retorted. “You say her name as if you know her.”

His smoky eyes narrowing to dangerous slits. “Of course I know her. She's my fiancée.”

“Your fiancée!”

Ignoring Maggie's surprised gasp, he pinned her with a hard look. “What I
don't
know is why she came to Cannes before I called her, and why you involved her in this operation.”

She debated which issue to address first—the fact that David apparently no longer had a fiancée, at least according to Paige Lawrence, or the fact that Maggie hadn't involved the younger woman in this operation. After another quick glance at Doc's tight jaw, she decided to take the easy one first.

“I don't know why she's here a week early, and I didn't involve her in the mission. It was a mistake. A mix-up. My contact evidently mistook her for me.”

Doc ran an eye down her bright gold-and-red-clad form. “Unless your contact is completely blind, there's no way he could mistake Paige for you. She wears dresses, not spangles. And sensible shoes, not elevators.”

“Platforms,” Maggie said, trying to find a way to break the news that the last time she'd seen Paige Lawrence, she was wearing spangles and three-inch platforms and not much else.

“Look, Doc, I don't understand this any more than you do. It's incredible that she's here and we just happened to bump into each other. Just a crazy coincidence.” She paused, her brows drawing together. “Or is it?”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean? What else could it be?”

Still frowning, Maggie folded her arms across her chest. “Just what do you know about Paige Lawrence? Who is she, Doc?”

He stared at her for a long, incredulous moment. “I know all there is to know about her,” he stated with savage intensity.
“I've been engaged to her for over a year, and we dated for almost that long before deciding to marry.”

“You don't know what she's doing in Cannes,” Maggie pointed out.

He drew in a sharp breath, obviously struggling to contain himself.

“No doubt she got the dates confused. She does that occasionally. Well, regularly. Last month, she took me to her parents' home for their fortieth anniversary party. She got the date right. Even the day of the week. Just the wrong month.”

The tenderness Maggie had glimpsed in his eyes when he told her of his wedding plans a few days ago flickered in their depths once again.

“Paige has a mild form of dyslexia. One that causes her to transpose numbers. It's what drew me to her in the first place,” he added wryly. “That, and the two-hundred-dollar fee she mistakenly charged my department for a two-dollar technical publication. She's smart and generous, and far too trusting for her own good, but she gets a bit muddled at times. She needs someone to look after her.”

The tenderness vanished, to be replaced by a fierce, flaring protectiveness. “Which is why I intend to find her, and quickly. However she got involved in this operation, she's out of her depth here. Way out of her depth. Tell me exactly what happened,” he ordered.

Maggie did, although she found herself glossing over Paige's hesitant confession that she and Doc wouldn't be making a down payment on a house together. When they located the young woman and extracted her from the situation she'd inadvertently been drawn into, Paige could tell Doc about that herself, Maggie decided.

He listened to her brief account without interruption, absorbing every detail. When she finished, he began to pace the spacious suite.

“All right. We know the problem. This driver appears to have mistaken Paige for you. Now let's break it down into small pieces and find the solution.”

Maggie felt a surge of admiration at the way Doc deliberately, ruthlessly controlled his emotions and engaged his mind. She tended to operate more on instinct, yet she knew firsthand how many potentially dangerous situations Doc had neutralized with just this kind of swift, brilliant analysis.

“The driver will have instructions to take her someplace private. Someplace where your contact can remove and examine the chip. Someplace with access to a computer sophisticated enough to read the lines of code and verify that they contain the fiber-optic technology.”

His face set with intense concentration, Doc paced the blue-and-green Savonnerie carpet that covered the sitting room's parquet floor.

“I'd guess we have a half hour, an hour at most. When this contact discovers that Paige doesn't have the microdot, he'll either let her go or…” His jaw worked. “Or he'll make sure she doesn't tell anyone about her visit to wherever he's taken her.”