Hot Ice (14 page)

She had to get out of his force field PDQ. "Look," she said reasonably. "Let's get up, maybe call room service for a snack, and talk about it. I'm sure we can make some sort of equitable deal."

He didn't move. "I don't trust you."

Well, ditto, pal
. "Excuse me?
You're
the one who broke into
my
room. I get to be the one not trusting."

If he'd get off her, give her the five seconds it would take to get to the slider and another four seconds to scale the balcony—she'd be gone like the wind. Everything next door was ready for a lightning-fast getaway. A minute and a half—tops—and she'd be a memory.

"I can understand your annoyance," Taylor assured him with utmost sincerity. "Nobody likes to be put in a compromising position. But quite frankly, your request is unreasonable. And might I point out—it's downright
lazy
of you to think you can simply
ask
, and I'll hand over my take just because I did something you couldn't do, and it's
easier
for you."

"Has it occurred to you," he asked dangerously, "that I might be a
good
guy?"

The look he was giving her right now, from
very
close range, was that of a man contemplating dismemberment, and the stuffing of a body—
her body
—into a convenient viaduct. "Not really. No."

Taylor turned to look at the door as a loud knock sounded. "Who—" In trooped four men in dark suits. Hunt didn't seem surprised to see them. Well,
she
was. And not in a good way.

"This is how you interrogate the prisoner?" the man from the elevator asked dryly. He waited until the others were inside, then closed the door and leaned against it, hands in his pockets. So much for thinking he looked like a nice guy earlier, Taylor thought as her heart picked up speed and her brain riffled through escape possibilities.

Jesus, she was a piece of work. Hunt could practically hear the cogs turning in that quick brain of hers. "Kept her from running," he told his men. "Draw your weapons before I release her."

Her fake green eyes widened, and a little color leached out of her cheeks as all four men reached beneath their jackets for their guns. Her eyes came back to Hunt's. "Isn't this overkill?" she said.

"I didn't tell them to shoot you," he told her flatly, as if that order was an option at any time. Still holding her wrists, he levered himself off her, pulling her to her feet with him as he stood.

"Anything?" Aries asked, bending to pick up the wig and silicone pads from the floor. He shot Hunt an amused glance as he tossed them onto the rumpled bed. "You have an interesting interrogation technique."

"Expediency is my middle name." Hunt nudged Taylor Lindsay Kincaid toward a straight-backed chair and reluctantly let go of her wrists. She rubbed her skin with her fingertips, and he winced inwardly as he saw the red marks he'd left on her fair skin. He got over that little ping of guilt in a hurry by reminding himself exactly how slippery she was.

"Sit," he told her firmly. She was like a coiled spring. He didn't see how she could even imagine she was going to make a break for it with five armed men in the room. But he was damned sure she was trying to come up with a way. This time he wasn't taking any chances.

Bishop, Aries, Hallowell, and Tate spread themselves about the room. Hunt took the chair across the small table from her.

She gave him a stony glare. "What's next?" she asked tightly. "Rubber hoses? Water torture?"

"You do have an overactive imagination, don't you?"

"I'm not imagining
this
." She looked around. Her gaze resting briefly on each gun before coming back to Hunt. "Who are your friends? Feds?"

"We work for a counterterrorist organization called T-FLAC."

"Never heard of it."

"If you were a terrorist, you would have."

"Really?" She glanced at each man in turn, up and down, tie to shoes, and back again. "Geez, the government must be paying
really
well these days. Three-thousand-dollar suits and six-hundred-dollar shoes?" She shook her head. "I don't think so." She wiggled her fingers. "Let's see some ID, guys."

"Not government. No ID. Terrorist Force Logistical Command is a privately funded, freelance antiterrorist organization."

She shot him a skeptical look. "And I'm supposed to believe this on faith? Exactly who do you 'freelance'
for
?"

"Anyone with a terrorist problem."

She raised a dark brow. "America?"

"Frequently."

"In other words you work for the highest bidder. You guys are mercenaries."

"You could say that."

"I did. Who decides who the bad guys are?"

Hunt couldn't help but reluctantly admire her nerves of steel. Annoying as hell. A liar, and a thief. But she had brass.

"We do." She was full of questions, and opened her mouth with another one. "Conversation over," Hunt told her flatly.

It pissed him off royally that he could still feel the imprint of her body, supple and yielding against his. Still feel and, God help him,
taste
her on his lips. Still feel reluctant desire thrum through him as keenly now as it had earlier when they'd been alone. As if he still had her pinned to the bed.

She clasped her hands and rested them in her lap, not leaning against the seat back. Ready, Hunt thought sardonically, to make a run for it. He was almost curious enough to allow it, just to see what she'd do. Almost.

"Say I believe you—
On faith
, mind you. Since you expect me to trust you guys without a shred of proof that you are who you
say
you are.
I'm
not a terrorist."

"But you stole something from José Morales, who
is
," Hunt told her.

"Cut to the chase. Where the fuck are the disks, lady?" Bishop demanded.

Like the rest of the team, Hunt knew Neal Bishop wasn't appreciative of the wild chase she'd led his team on for the last several months. Chasing her had wasted a hell of a lot of time. And everyone on the team was keenly aware of that.

She turned to give Bishop a hard look. "Two things. One, watch your language. Two, don't talk to me in that tone of voice. I don't give a damn who you guys are, I won't be treated with disrespect because you think you can get away with it. I'm listening, but play nicely."

Hunt's lips twitched. "How well do you know José and Maria Morales?" The woman had more balls than good sense.

With her pale skin and wild mane of dark hair, and wearing that red scrap of a dress, she looked like some half-wild wood sprite. Without the bravado, she looked softer, more vulnerable than Hunt had ever seen her. Not weaker, by any stretch of the imagination, but less brittle, less on the defensive. "I've been to several of their parties."

"How did you meet?" Hunt asked her.

"The Konstantinopouloses' yacht party a few years ago."

"Neo Konstantinopoulos?" Bishop asked.

She nodded.

Max's and Hunt's eyes met before Hunt said flatly, "Also a known terrorist."

"Also?" she asked carefully. She was surrounded, but she didn't fidget or even look nervous. Because, Hunt suddenly realized, she had a plan to get away from them before the going got rough. At least, she
thought
she did. She was in for a rude awakening.

"Are you telling us," Hunt raised a brow, "that you
aren't
aware that José Morales is a terrorist?"

"It's not something that has ever come up over cocktails, so the answer is no, of course not." She examined her manicure before glancing up. "All I know is they're an interesting couple, and they give fun parties."

"And you enjoy stealing from your friends?"

"Acquaintances."

Hunt nodded acquiescence. "Your
acquaintance
, Morales, had papers, one or more disks, and possibly a small handheld device in that safe. You removed said items. We want them."

She gave them a considering look. "I don't know about the other things. But there was nothing heavy enough to be a handheld anything. And before you feel obliged to repeat yourself, your friend here already asked. I'll give you the same answer I gave him.
Not going to happen
. I don't take the kind of risks I take to hand everything over to a second party. Besides,
if
I took them—and that's a big
if
, boys—I wouldn't admit it and incriminate myself."

"You stole items critical to national security," Hunt told her, cutting to the chase.

She turned her head to look from Max back to Hunt. If he didn't know better, Hunt might've been fooled by her fragility too. But he did know better. He had a small, months-old scar over his left eyebrow to prove it.

"Why do you guys always hide under the umbrella of 'national security'? If this stuff you're looking for was so damn important, why didn't
you
steal it yourselves?"

Hunt ground his back teeth together and ignored her little jab. She'd done what Fisk. T-FLAC's best sticky-fingers operative,
couldn't
. Opened the bloody safe. Frank Fisk, on hearing that she'd not only opened the Morales safe, but gotten away with the contents, had been bowled over and impressed by her skill. It took a hell of a lot to impress the taciturn Fisk.

Hunt, however was merely annoyed. "Are you under the erroneous impression that our questions are multiple choice?" he asked. "If you don't hand over those items, you'll go to jail for treason." He waited a beat for another thin layer of her confidence to erode.

"Treason is a capital offense. Execution isn't out of the question. Cooperate and we might be able to convince the U.S. Attorney to take the death penalty off the table."

He saw the stark reality sink in. She gave him a level look. "I mailed everything."

She wasn't stupid. Good. That saved time. "To whom?" Hunt asked.

"Myself."

He raised a brow. She'd been arrested in her San Cristóbal hotel room within minutes of arriving back from the party. "Really? And when exactly did you have time to do that?"

She inhaled sharply, let her gaze wander around the room as if considering whether to tell him. When she finally looked to him again, Hunt knew she'd made her choice. "On the way from the party back to my hotel. I carried an addressed, prepaid mailer with me."

"What's the address?" When she hesitated, he gave her a hard look. "The truth."

"I want a lawyer." She folded her arms across her chest, crossed her legs as if she were a debutante at a tea party, and gave him a look that said she was through talking for a while.

Chapter Twelve

Hunt accessed something on the laptop, then turned the monitor so Taylor could see it. "Sure you can lawyer-up. No problem," he told her. "And we'll send him a copy of
this
so he can start working on your defense."

After a brief hesitation, she glanced down at the monitor. Her real passport photograph was at the top of the page, followed by smaller pictures from each of her alias passports. The text blurred, and her fingers shook as she scrolled down, giving every appearance that she was randomly scrolling, when in fact she was looking for a specific name.