Sapphire (20 page)

“Please, baby, let me explain. Or Christ, let me
try
to explain.”

When she nodded tentatively, he said, his voice raspy with emotion.

“Sapphire, tomorrow I’m going to take you back to the
Caligula Club
and literally challenge Roberto Ventrilo to make a pass at you. Hell, it’s worse than that! I’m going to ensure that he not only goes after you, but that he captures you.”Sapphire pushed at his hands, a hard frown knotted her brows.

“I don’t understand, Jase. That’s exactly what we both are going to make happen. It’s the foundation of our plan. I’m going to do everything I can to entice Ventrilo and if I’m successful, as we both know I will be, he will soon be coming on to me.”

He glimpsed the understanding that was beginning to flood her expression. Her voice rose as she stepped back, her frown morphing into a glare.

“Don’t tell me you are getting cold feet, Jase? Are you afraid that I can’t do it? That I will renege on the plan? Somehow corrupt the mission?”

Jase managed to keep from shouting, barely.

“No, goddammit. You know that’s not what I think, baby. I
know
you will. You’ll have him eating out of your hands in minutes. Christ, it won’t take you three days to be dragged into one of his private playrooms.”

Sapphire held up her hand stopping him.

“Exactly, Jase. That is exactly what I will do, exactly as we have been
planning
from the beginning. And when I get into his private playroom, I’m going to use all of my feminine wiles to worm every scintilla of information I can from him. And then I’ll wrangle it so that I can meet the other girls. The ones he has decided are fit for sale. Finally, if I’m as skillful as I know I am, I’ll get him to introduce me to his disgusting clients so that we can take them down when we take him down. And from that point on you and I, and the rest of the team, will put in action the plan that will ensure that we accomplish our mission. Do now what you have been working to do for nearly a year. That is to topple his human trafficking operation and send that fucking pervert to hell and ensure that he’ll never come back.”

Sapphire stepped back, disbelief fighting with her barely contained fury. Her voice shook with intensity.

“Are you telling me, Jase, after all of this? After constructing all these painstaking plans? Your search to find me and bring me on board? After convincing Ian and Diamond to hire me, that
now
you think I can’t do it? That I’m not up to the job?”

Her voice rose dangerously high as she glared at him.

Jase met her angry gaze and jerked her toward him. He didn’t try to couch his anger, modify or morph the fury that was tearing at his gut. He literally yelled at her.

“That’s just it!” His voice shook with emotion. “Goddammit, Sapphire, I don’t know if
I
can do it! The thought of you and that schizophrenic madman in the same room—without me there to protect you? Dammit. I…I don’t know if I can do it.”

Jase huffed a hard sigh as shocked by his admission as he was sure Sapphire was. But having said it, he didn’t intend to take it back. At some deep level he’d known. He was going to have to take her off the team. He couldn’t maintain his necessary distance. Something that was essential if they were going to accomplish their mission. The only question was how to tell her. How to let her down easy. As it turned out, he needn’t have worried. Sapphire broke into his agonized reverie with a scornful sneer.

“w known at some deep l;evet that he was gpoing to have to take her off the team. He was too close to her Well isn’t that just too damn bad, Agent Malone? Because that is exactly what I am going to do. What my commander has told me to do. What my boss and her boss are expecting me to do. For your information, and for the last damned time that I’m going to say it, doing what I am goddammed good at doing!”

Jase closed his eyes, not wanting to see the hurt and pain underneath her anger. When he opened them and met her gaze, he raised his hands in a helpless gesture and shrugged.

“Jesus. I’m falling in love with you, Gabriella.”

Sapphire stepped back her eyes widening in surprise. As his words began to sink in, she shook her head, slowly at first and then fiercely from side to side.

“That…that’s not possible, Jase,” she stammered. “You know it isn’t.”

She extricated her hands from his grip and stepped back. Meeting his gaze a chain of emotions tripped over her expressive face. He should have known that scorn would be the one that finally took up residence.

She sneered, her voice rife with sarcasm.

“Well, Commander, I will tell you that’s the first time an arrogant asshole who’s wanted to get rid of me came up with
that
excuse.” She tipped up her chin and brushed at the angry tears on her cheek.

“Sorry, big boy. It’s not going to work. Even you don’t have the balls to go to Ian Ross and say to him what you just said to me. He’d laugh you out of the room. And even though you are an asshole, and a first class one at that, you aren’t cruel. You know how much this mission means to me. If you throw me off, I’ll never be able to work in this industry again. I…I….”

Her voice broke and she turned away, not able to suppress an angry sob.

Jase swallowed hard against the lump in his throat that was threatening to choke him. He sighed long and hard and then stepped up next to her. He drew her rigid back up against his chest and wrapped his arms around her unyielding body. For a long moment he rested his cheek against the top of her head then buried his face in her hair, allowing himself to drink in her heavenly fragrance. Emitting a long, hard sigh, he leaned down and murmured in her ear.

“You’re right, Sapphire. As much as I want you off this mission, out of danger, I wouldn’t do that. You are precisely the right agent for the job. If anyone can take Ventrilo down, you can. I and the rest of the team will do everything in our power to make sure you succeed, and that you aren’t hurt in the process. You can count on me, just as I know I can count on you.”

He pulled her closer and brushed his lips against the sensitive skin under her ear. His voice was low, tight with emotion.

“But you’re wrong, Sapphire, when you said I didn’t mean what I said to you. I did mean it. Trust me, I’m as shocked as you are. But like you, I’m going to have to learn how to live with it. Not only because I am falling in love with you, but because you also are falling in love with me.”

He grunted softly and nipped at her earlobe, causing her to tremble in his arms. Her shiver was palpable. He held her tighter in his embrace, not willing to let her go. His hard sigh was resigned.

“At this point, my lovely, dangerous agent, the best we can hope for is that neither one of us will die because of it.”

Chapter 21

I
an Ross accepted the Dominican cigar Grayson Webb offered, and took his time lighting the fragrant stalk. Jase knew his boss well. They’d worked together for years on missions so secretive that if anything went wrong, should either of them or their teams be killed, the U. S. Government would deny their involvement with their last breath. It was clear from Ian’s slight frown and the focused way he was choosing to smoke his cigar that he was as concerned with Noah’s and Grayson’s report as Jase was. Having arrived after his team members, Jase assumed they had briefed Col. Ross on the events of the evening.

Jase never ceased to be amazed at Ian’s strategic grasp of the issues in a challenging mission. The wily Colonel was able to slice through a maze of details and determine when and how changes needed to be made. The only person who was as skillful in that regard was Jase. It made the two of them an unbeatable team. Ross’s other gift was his extraordinary personal wealth. His massive family fortune put him in the top 1 percent of wealthy individuals in the country. While being rich was of course nice, for Jase, Ian’s wealth had an added benefit. His boss was on a first-name basis with virtually every mover and shaker in the country. His “black book” included wealthy power brokers in every sector. The fact that Ian’s call was always returned, whether it was a Senator, a General or the CEO of a large financial institution, made him an invaluable resource when they were chasing a criminal as potent as Roberto Ventrilo.

Jase choose not to join his three colleagues at the conference table. Rather, he leaned against the bar quietly sipping his Scotch. The distance gave him a chance to study them and try to get his own emotions under control. He hoped to God that the upset he was struggling with wasn’t visible. Knowing Ian Ross, and the other two men as well, Jase conceded it was likely a vain hope and decided to join the thoughtful troika. Sinking into one of the leather armchairs surrounding the ornate conference table, Jase addressed Ian.

“Were you able to reach Mikhail, Ian?”

The reference to their high level Russian agent went to the heart of Jase’s concerns. In addition to the report on Roberto’s latest heinous crime, Noah and Grayson’s preliminary intel that Ventrilo was planning an auction scared the shit out of him. To date, their plans had been to take Ventrilo in the relative safety of his Club. But an international auction, with everything that it entailed, was a different matter entirely. Except for the extraordinary danger it posed to Sapphire, Jase knew that an auction offered them an opportunity not only to snare Ventrilo, but also capture a host of the international criminals he worked with.

Ian focused on him and answered his question.

“I spoke to Mikhail while we were waiting for you, Jase. He confirmed what Noah and Gray told us. And yes, there is to be an auction. Mikhail got the information from one of their top Eastern Bloc agents who’d heard that half a dozen Saudi sheiks were planning a ‘buying trip’ to the Southwestern United States.”

Jase shuddered a hard sigh. Mikhail Bortsov, Ian’s trusted agent, had been warning Jase that Roberto was planning to make a big splash in the trafficking arena. Auctions were the favored way to attract wealthy connoisseurs of womanly flesh, particularly if the merchandise was fresh, select and pricey. There was something about the man who had everything that drove him to seek the very best. And if he could snatch that prize away from his peers, all the better. Jase admitted that a high level auction was an excellent way for Roberto to establish himself as an elite player in the highly competitive international human trafficking market.

Ian met Jase’s gaze and continued. “As for the location, believe it or not it’s scheduled to take place at none other than Roberto’s complex,
The Canyons.
”

Noah whistled. “Fuck, the guy has balls if nothing else. You mean he is going to invite some of the world’s richest men to his personal spread in Arizona? And expect that they will come? Christ, the DEA will be all over this.” He added with a grin, “Particularly when we alert them.”

Jase shook his head in disagreement. “It’s not a dumb idea, Noah. If you think about it, it borders on brilliant. To begin with,
The Canyons
, Roberto’s mountain top enclave, is unreachable except by helicopter or private plane. He’s been entertaining some of the biggest and most violent Cartels in his palatial retreat and not once has the DEA been able to bust a high level meeting. The goddamn place is virtually inaccessible which is why it is the perfect place to hold an auction of this level. Remember that in addition to owning their own fleets of birds and private planes, the attendees come with a bigger advantage, their private security force.”

Grayson cut in. “You’re right, Jase. Only the wealthiest men in the world will have the necessary transportation, and the goon force to attend the meeting.”

“Which leaves us with several options, none of them good.”

Jase didn’t bother to hide the bitterness in his voice. This is what he’d been concerned about. Make that, what he had been dreading. He’d predicted that Roberto was going to come up with some star level event to stake his claim in the international arena. It would be an event that was virtually impossible to secure and one that Sapphire was going to be right in the middle of. He reminded himself; with a grimace, that was where he had planned to put her.

“I would ask you what you are thinking about Agent Malone, but, instead, let me take a wild guess.”

Ian’s lip curled up in the corner with suppressed amusement but Jase didn’t miss the fact that his friend’s incipient smile didn’t reach his dark gray eyes.

Rather than be baited by any of his three companions, Jase stole the ball.

“What I presume we
all
are thinking about, Ian. It is critical that we find out when the auction is to take place so that we have as fighting chance of raiding it. Second, we need to find where Roberto is stashing his prized girls. Let’s face it, the ones he keeps at the
Caligula Club
are not the caliber of those that he’ll be presenting to international connoisseurs. We know that he has Aimee Carpenter hidden away somewhere. We need to find out where she is, if for no other reason than that may be where he is keeping his prized trophies.”

Ian nodded. “Which is of course but only two of the assignments we have given to the delectable Sapphire.”

It wasn’t necessary for Ian to detail the rest of Sapphire’s assignments, they’d gone over them as a group so many times. But some vicious demon inside of him, the one that seemed to have made it his mission to keep Jase from taking deep breathes and ensuring that bile would reside permanently in his throat, made Jase tick off the rest.