Dreamwalker (15 page)

She stretched slowly, reluctant to leave the warmth of Damon’s embrace, but the cabin lights were on. While there was still no one else to notice, she slid off his lap and fixed her clothes, pulling her skirt down to her knees. Her sheath clenched in complaint, already missing his thick cock.

Braced for knowing looks from the flight attendants, Rory headed for the restrooms. She couldn’t believe she’d spent the rest of the night in Damon’s arms, still joined with him.

The stickiness between her legs was quickly remedied. As she dabbed her thighs dry, the announcement was repeated, broadcast over the speakers like a ghostly refrain. Not her concern. Straightening her skirt, she ignored it in favor of checking her hair. Not bad, considering how Damon had sunk his fingers into her curls.

On the way back to her seat, Rory had to give way to the purser and a rumpled woman going in the opposite direction through business class and disappearing into the forward cabin.

While she’d been gone, Damon had tucked his cock back into his pants and otherwise eliminated the evidence of their late-night activities, she was pleased to note. All spick-and-span and unrevealing—exactly how she liked things.

For a Fed, he sure knew a lot about maintaining an impeccable facade. No one would suspect they’d indulged in a night of sexual high jinks to look at him.

He turned to her as she reached her place, a brow raised in polite inquiry. The consummate travel companion.

She gave him a careless bob of her head as she sat down, allowing a frowning flight attendant to continue down the aisle. No worries. Everything was fine.

At least with her.

It seemed the flight crew might have disagreed. They didn’t bustle as crews normally did in preparation for serving yet another meal. Their mood was grim—worried and out of sorts, but with none of the tension that would suggest a medical emergency.

As Rory finger combed her tousled curls into a semblance of order, she caught fragments of a murmured conversation between some flight attendants huddled in the service bay just behind her and Damon’s row.

“
—
muerto.”

“Celeste descubrió
—
”

That raised mental eyebrows. No wonder they were so worked up. A passenger had been found dead in first class. Well, it had nothing to do with her. As she resumed fixing her hair, she turned toward the window to check the weather.

With a soft grunt, Damon flexed his shoulders, a faint smile on his chiseled lips. His motion snagged her attention, showcasing as it did his excellent physique. But it was the smile that stayed with her.

It bothered Rory, though it wasn’t until the breakfast service that she realized why. The smile hadn’t had the smugness of sexual satisfaction. Coupled with the cold glint in his eyes, it had been more . . . predatory.

It struck her then. Besides having a reputation for seducing women in their dreams, incubi were also known—according to legend, at least—for causing sudden, inexplicable death in sleep. And that was precisely what he’d said he was.

Moreover, Damon had never clarified what his “usual gig” was, when he wasn’t chasing down thieves. Would he have said he was a hit man for the government?

Rory studied her companion with fresh eyes and not a little misgiving. To have such a man traipsing through her dreams— how safe could that be?

A twinge of excitement answered that thought. Once again, she was reminded that she didn’t steal to be safe. If she’d wanted that, she’d be headlining her own act in Vegas, alongside Uncle Justin.

Remembering the man who had died in first class, she shivered. Damon had entered her dreams again last night, yet there hadn’t been any reason for him to do so. She’d already agreed to undertake his commission. Had it been a postscript to some other purpose?

Did he have a hand in that man’s death? Or was it merely coincidence? Even she had heard of deep-vein thrombosis, which sometimes struck passengers on long-distance flights. It was a possible explanation, although unlikely in this case since it sounded like the man had been in the sleeping deck, not trapped for straight hours in a cramped seat.

Could he have killed her when he strode through her dreams? An electric tingle shot up Rory’s spine, the same thrill of excitement she got when faced with a chancy approach or scaling the side of a high-rise with only a thin harness as anchor. As conscious as she was of her seatmate, that line of thought made for an uncomfortable meal.

“Did you kill him?” Rory murmured as she leaned across Damon to look out the window, ostensibly taking in the view of the Mediterranean far below. The sudden question broke several hours of brooding silence, monosyllabic responses, and churning emotion on her part. It also explained her withdrawal: she’d connected the dots from seduction to death-dealing, which— granted—common mythology recognized lay within the realm of an incubus’s powers, to this particular execution.

Wondering how she would react, he answered honestly: “Yes.”

“Why?”

“Most recently?” Damon shrugged, not wanting to go into the long list of al-Hazzezi’s crimes. “He was responsible for the embassy bombing in Greece last year. The one that killed twenty-five staffers and six Marines on Christmas Day.”

She eyed him sidelong, curiosity bringing out the green in her aquamarine eyes. “So you waltzed into his head and killed him, just like that?”

He inhaled deeply, savoring the whiff of her floral shampoo that the constant blast of coolness from the air-conditioning nozzle overhead carried to him. There was something unspeakably intimate about that little discovery, much more so than the physical act they’d shared. His unusual response to such a minor detail made him wonder if he was losing his edge. “Nothing so simple, but essentially, yes.”

Unease rippled across her aura, staining it with shadows. “How could you do that?”

Keeping his face blank, Damon shrugged. “The theory is simple, really. You convince the body that it’s dying, and it does.”

“But to kill . . .”

“It was necessary.”

Rory turned away, her rosy cheeks turning pale as her conflicting emotions rasped his mental antennae. “I can’t imagine doing that. Killing anyone.”

“Oh, is this the point where I’m supposed to snarl that I hate terrorists because they killed my parents?” Damon nearly bit his tongue when he heard himself make the airy disclosure. He waved a hand dismissively while his mind flailed in disarray. “Consider it snarled, if it makes you happy.” Long practice kept the old pain from his voice; he hadn’t succeeded in his line of work by wearing his heart on his sleeve.

But why had he told her that? What was it about his master thief that made him drop his guard around her?

Luckily, Rory didn’t seem at all intimidated. They couldn’t afford to scare her off; it would be impossible to find another master thief at this late a date. She gave him a hard look from narrowed eyes turned turquoise, her thoughts unreadable—save for a lack of fear. That alone permitted him a measure of relief. She might not like what he did, but she wasn’t about to back out of the job because of it.

Damon gave additional thanks when she didn’t pursue the discussion. With his uncharacteristic openness, he just might have spilled his guts, given the right questions.

Of course, Rory had a few secrets of her own, starting with her true hair color. Although he’d been focused on getting off last night, he hadn’t missed the soft, wispy red curls at the entrance to her body, so different from the respectable blond muff from before. She hadn’t shaved; it was just—apparently— naturally sparse.

The high regard he held for her ratcheted up a few more notches. To have effected such a thorough transformation—and taken even her pubic hair into account—in the little time she’d had at the airport was surely the height of professionalism. It boded well for their work together.

He took an easier breath when she settled back into her seat, a thoughtful inward look darkening her aquamarine eyes.

Despite the death on board the plane, the rest of the flight to Rome and the remainder of their trip were uneventful. By the time they arrived in Macedonia under another set of identities, fatigue wrapped Rory’s brain in thick cotton, jet lag setting in after crossing too many time zones too quickly.

But she managed to rouse her mind into a semblance of alertness when Damon’s agency made covert contact.

The pickup and transfer had been smooth, professional. Rory hadn’t noticed anything special about the taxi Damon flagged down at the Skopje airport. But when they were dropped off at the hotel, they’d had one more piece of luggage than when they’d boarded: a leather briefcase that matched Damon’s bags.

She held her silence while they checked into the hotel and got a single room with a king-size bed.

“What’s in it?” Rory finally asked, eyeing the briefcase as her curiosity overcame jet lag.

Rather than answer, Damon worked the combination locks and opened the bag with a click. It was stuffed with sheets of paper, which he laid out on the bedspread. A show of trust so she knew he wasn’t holding anything back?

“I guess this means the job’s still on.”

He smiled, clearly understanding her underlying question. “We have teams working to locate it. If they can seize it before Karadzic gets it to his base, all the better. But we’re not betting on that happening.” He glanced at her as he continued to unload the briefcase. “Don’t worry. You keep your up-front money in the unlikely event that you don’t have to go in.”

She plucked out a computer print that caught her eye. “Satellite pictures, even.” She was tempted to whistle. Whoever had assembled this packet had gone over and above to anticipate their needs. The briefcase was a treasure trove of information, some of which might actually be good.

Leafing through the myriad sheets, she extracted a detailed map that looked too clean to be a photocopy. “How accurate are these?” Even the best maps available, commercial or otherwise, weren’t a hundred percent reliable. Mapmakers had an irritating habit of incorporating inaccuracies for copyright protection, national security, or some other idiosyncratic reason.

“Very. They’re Company generated.”

Rory raised a brow at the rock-hard confidence in Damon’s voice. It seemed the Fed had a blind spot. “Nice to have resources,” she murmured coolly. Still, she committed the map to memory, forcing her foggy brain to process the information. It was better than nothing, and she couldn’t risk standing out by resorting to a hard copy once they were on-site.

He snorted. Perhaps he noticed her expression or heard something in her comment, or maybe he sensed her reservations, because he added: “Fuckups do happen. But the Old Man is giving this mission his personal attention.”

And that was that, apparently. His boss must have big brass balls for him to have earned that much confidence.

But when Damon laid a satellite image beside the map for comparison, it became obvious that the agency’s mapmakers had access to primary sources.

Difficult though it was, Rory had to concede that the Fed might have some basis for his trust.

She studied the satellite image. Like most old towns, it was a warren of small winding streets and dead-end alleys, with no clear divisions as to residential and commercial or industrial zones. The confluence of two rivers, spanned at several points by bridges, cut through the middle, dividing the town roughly into three sections—though more likely, the town had grown up around it. A potential bottleneck. “Where’s Karadzic’s base?”

“Here.” He traced an irregular block in the northeast section with a long, blunt index finger. “The KLA represents most of the organized crime in the area. But don’t mistake that for control. They’re a mishmash of gangs that are frequently involved in turf wars.”

Bending over the image, Rory nodded to herself. There were similarities to the situation in Peć—much of which was familiar from her prep work for the Ipek Crucifix job. She had to caution herself not to make assumptions on that basis.

The section Damon indicated wasn’t that different from other areas—except perhaps for a preponderance of cars. Traffic could be a help or a hindrance, depending on the situation. It was also an indicator for places where people might congregate, like markets . . . or gang strongholds, to cite a not-so-random example.

She checked the time stamp on the image. It was a night shot, which possibly meant lots of activity during the time she worked best.
Oh, goody
—
not.

“I propose we stay here.” Damon pointed to a spot in the lower half of the image in the middle of a knot of tiny buildings. “It’s a hostel run by a CIA asset. He’s in the business of selling information, so I wouldn’t trust him out of arm’s reach. But the revolving tenant population should make blending in easier.”

Rory smiled at his reasoning. She wouldn’t have trusted a CIA contractor anyway, since he wasn’t family. Not that Damon was family, but he was a special case; she trusted him to do whatever was necessary to get the job done.

“This might be a problem.” She tapped the lone bridge near the hostel. Unlike the northern portions of the river, which had a bridge every other street or so, there was only one for a long stretch in the south that crossed to the northeast. It would limit her options for getting to the target. Unless she went out of her way and crossed in the north, all her routes would have to funnel through that one bridge, making her somewhat predictable.

“Can’t be helped. I’d rather not stay any closer to the target. This area”—he swept his hand across the east side—“is held by gangs with ties to Karadzic. Also, our line of retreat is south, to get back to Macedonia. This gives us more options.”

Rory considered the image glumly, unable to argue the point. It would make her job so much easier if she didn’t have to lug the nuke halfway across town and through the bottleneck of that single bridge. Unfortunately, his logic was unassailable. “Ugh.” But better that than to nest among vipers. Not that the hostel was much of an improvement, but at least it wasn’t quite the . . . enemy’s home grounds.