Midnight Rainbow

Passion and espionage meet in this fan-favorite tale from
New York Times
bestselling author Linda Howard

Grant Sullivan is the best agent the US government has ever had, and he has one mission: rescue the wealthy socialite Jane Hamilton Greer from captivity. But is Jane just a society girl in over her head, or is she really engaged in espionage that could compromise US interests for years to come? Only one thing is certain: when Grant finds Jane, questions of guilt and innocence begin to fade against the undeniable attraction between this fiery couple…

Praise for
New York Times
bestselling author

LINDA HOWARD

“You can't read just one Linda Howard!”

—
New York Times
bestselling author Catherine Coulter

“Linda Howard writes with power, stunning sensuality and a storytelling ability unmatched in the romance drama. Every book is a treasure for the reader to savor again and again.”

—
New York Times
bestselling author Iris Johansen

“This master storyteller takes our breath away.”

—
RT Book Reviews

“Ms. Howard can wring so much emotion and tension out of her characters that no matter how satisfied you are when you finish a book, you still want more.”

—
Rendezvous

“Linda Howard knows what readers want.”

—
Affaire de Coeur

“Linda Howard is an extraordinary talent whose unforgettable novels are richly flavored with scintillating sensuality and high-voltage suspense.”

—
RT Book Reviews

“Already a legend in her own time, Linda Howard exemplifies the very best of the romance genre. Her strong characterizations and powerful insight into the human heart have made her an author cherished by readers everywhere.”

—
RT Book Reviews

LINDA HOWARD

Trouble

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

H
E WAS GETTING
too old for this kind of
crap, Grant Sullivan thought irritably. What the hell was he doing crouched here, when
he'd promised himself he'd never set foot in a jungle again? He was supposed to rescue a
bubble-brained society deb, but from what he'd seen in the two days he'd had this jungle
fortress under surveillance, he thought she might not
want
to be rescued. She
looked as if she was having the time of her life: laughing, flirting, lying by the pool
in the heat of the day. She slept late; she drank champagne on the flagstone patio. Her
father was almost out of his mind with worry about her, thinking that she was suffering
unspeakable torture at the hands of her captors. Instead, she was lolling around as if
she were vacationing on the Riviera. She certainly wasn't being tortured. If anyone was
being tortured, Grant thought with growing ire, it was he himself. Mosquitoes were
biting him, flies were stinging him, sweat was running off him in rivers, and his legs
were aching from sitting still for so long. He'd been eating field rations again, and
he'd forgotten how much he hated field rations. The humidity made all of his old wounds
ache, and he had plenty of old wounds to ache. No doubt about it: he was definitely too
old.

He was thirty-eight, and he'd spent over half his life involved in some
war, somewhere. He was tired, tired enough that he'd opted out the year before, wanting
nothing more than to wake up in the same bed every morning. He hadn't
wanted company or advice or anything, except to be left the hell alone. When he had
burned out, he'd burned to the core.

He hadn't quite retreated to the mountains to live in a cave, where he
wouldn't have to see or speak to another human being, but he had definitely considered
it. Instead, he'd bought a run-down farm in Tennessee, just in the shadow of the
mountains, and let the green mists heal him. He'd dropped out, but apparently he hadn't
dropped far enough: they had still known how to find him. He supposed wearily that his
reputation made it necessary for certain people to know his whereabouts at all times.
Whenever a job called for jungle experience and expertise, they called for Grant
Sullivan.

A movement on the patio caught his attention, and he cautiously moved a
broad leaf a fraction of an inch to clear his line of vision. There she was, dressed to
the nines in a frothy sundress and heels, with an enormous pair of sunglasses shading
her eyes. She carried a book and a tall glass of something that looked deliciously cool;
she arranged herself artfully on one of the poolside deck chairs, and prepared to wile
away the muggy afternoon. She waved to the guards who patrolled the plantation grounds
and flashed them her dimpled smile.

Damn her pretty, useless little hide! Why couldn't she have stayed under
Daddy's wing, instead of sashaying around the world to prove how “independent” she was?
All she'd proved was that she had a remarkable talent for landing herself in hot
water.

Poor dumb little twit, he thought. She probably didn't even realize that
she was one of the central characters in a nasty little espionage caper that had at
least three government and several other factions, all hostile, scrambling to find a
missing microfilm. The only thing that had saved
her life so far was
that no one was sure how much she knew, or whether she knew anything at all. Had she
been involved in George Persall's espionage activities, he wondered, or had she only
been his mistress, his high-class “secretary”? Did she know where the microfilm was, or
did Luis Marcel, who had disappeared, have it? The only thing anyone knew for certain
was that George Persall had had the microfilm in his possession. But he'd died of a
heart attack—in
her
bedroom—and the microfilm hadn't been found. Had Persall
already passed it to Luis Marcel? Marcel had dropped out of sight two days before
Persall died—if he had the microfilm, he certainly wasn't talking about it. The
Americans wanted it, the Russians wanted it, the Sandinistas wanted it, and every rebel
group in Central and South America wanted it. Hell, Sullivan thought, as far as he knew,
even the Eskimos wanted it.

So where was the microfilm? What had George Persall done with it? If he
had indeed passed it to Luis Marcel, who was his normal contact, then where was Luis?
Had Luis decided to sell the microfilm to the highest bidder? That seemed unlikely.
Grant knew Luis personally; they had been in some tight spots together and he trusted
Luis at his back, which said a lot.

Government agents had been chasing this particular microfilm for about a
month now. A high-level executive of a research firm in California had made a deal to
sell the government-classified laser technology his firm had developed, technology that
could place laser weaponry in space in the near future. The firm's own security people
had become suspicious of the man and alerted the proper government authorities; together
they had apprehended the executive in the middle of the sale. But the two buyers had
escaped, taking the microfilm with them. Then one of the buyers double-crossed his
partner and took himself and the
microfilm to South America to
strike his own deal. Agents all over Central and South America had been alerted, and an
American agent in Costa Rica had made contact with the man, setting up a “sting” to buy
the microfilm. Things became completely confused at that point. The deal had gone sour,
and the agent had been wounded, but he had gotten away with the microfilm. The film
should have been destroyed at that point, but it hadn't been. Somehow the agent had
gotten it to George Persall, who could come and go freely in Costa Rica because of his
business connections. Who would have suspected George Persall of being involved in
espionage? He'd always seemed just a tame businessman, albeit with a passion for
gorgeous “secretaries”—a weakness any Latin man would understand. Persall had been known
to only a few agents, Luis Marcel among them, and that had made him extraordinarily
effective. But in this case, George had been left in the dark; the agent had been
feverish from his wound and hadn't told George to destroy the film.

Luis Marcel had been supposed to contact George, but instead Luis had
disappeared. Then George, who had always seemed to be disgustingly healthy, had died of
a heart attack…and no one knew where the microfilm was. The Americans wanted to be
certain that the technology didn't fall into anyone else's hands; the Russians wanted
the technology just as badly, and every revolutionary in the hemisphere wanted the
microfilm in order to sell it to the highest bidder. An arsenal of weapons could be
purchased, revolutions could be staged, with the amount of money that small piece of
film would bring on the open market.

Manuel Turego, head of national security in Costa Rica, was a very smart
man; he was a bastard, Grant thought, but a smart one. He'd promptly snatched up Ms.
Priscilla Jane Hamilton Greer and carried her off to this heavily
guarded inland “plantation.” He'd probably told her that she was under protective
custody, and she was probably stupid enough that she was very grateful to him for
“protecting” her. Turego had played it cool; so far he hadn't harmed her. Evidently he
knew that her father was a very wealthy, very influential man, and that it wasn't wise
to enrage wealthy, influential men unless it was absolutely necessary. Turego was
playing a waiting game; he was waiting for Luis Marcel to surface, waiting for the
microfilm to surface, as it eventually had to. In the meantime, he had Priscilla; he
could afford to wait. Whether she knew anything or not, she was valuable to him as a
negotiating tool, if nothing else.

From the moment Priscilla had disappeared, her father had been frantic.
He'd been calling in political favors with a heavy hand, but he'd found that none of the
favors owed to him could get Priscilla away from Turego. Until Luis was found, the
American government wasn't going to lift a hand to free the young woman. The confusion
about whether or not she actually knew anything, the tantalizing possibility that she
could
know the location of the microfilm, seemed to have blunted the
intensity of the search for Luis. Her captivity could give him the edge he needed by
attracting attention away from him.

Finally, desperate with worry and enraged by the lack of response he'd
been getting from the government, James Hamilton had decided to take matters into his
own hands. He'd spent a small fortune ferreting out his daughter's location, and then
had been stymied by the inaccessibility of the well-guarded plantation. If he sent in
enough men to take over the plantation, he realized, there was a strong possibility that
his daughter would be killed in the fight. Then someone had mentioned Grant Sullivan's
name.

A man as wealthy as James Hamilton could find
someone
who didn't want to be found, even a wary, burnt-out ex-government agent who had buried
himself in the Tennessee mountains. Within twenty-four hours, Grant had been sitting
across from Hamilton, in the library of a huge estate house that shouted of old money.
Hamilton had made an offer that would pay off the mortgage on Grant's farm completely.
All the man wanted was to have his daughter back, safe and sound. His face had been
lined and taut with worry, and there had been a desperation about him that, even more
than the money, made Grant reluctantly accept the job.

The difficulty of rescuing her had seemed enormous, perhaps even
insurmountable; if he were able to penetrate the security of the plantation—something he
didn't really doubt—getting her out would be something else entirely. Not only that, but
Grant had his own personal experiences to remind him that, even if he found her, the
odds were greatly against her being alive or recognizably human. He hadn't let himself
think about what could have happened to her since the day she'd been kidnapped.