Tanner's Scheme (12 page)

She rose to her feet, sophisticated perfection dressed in a short, navy silk skirt and jacket with a creamy-colored silk blouse beneath. She was buttoned up, composed and disapproving.

“You’re going to have to get your men into social training.” She paced over to his desk, her regal expression a challenge.

“Jess, not right now,” he growled.

Her lips lifted into a condescending smile. “Yes, your plots and schemes are so much more important at the moment.” She braced her hands on his desk and leaned forward. “Tell me, Jonas, what are you going to do when everything and everyone you’ve manipulated backfires on you?”

His brow quirked. That was an interesting scenario.

“Enjoy the battle?” he queried with faint amusement.

A frown snapped between her brows. “This isn’t a laughing matter.”

“Jess, I’ll tell you what, you do your job, the legal mumbo jumbo you enjoy so well, and let me do mine. I won’t tell you how to argue a case and you don’t tell me how to conduct my missions. Agreed?”

Her eyes narrowed. “I can’t wait until you fall.”

“Join the club,” he snorted. “I’m going to start charging for that particular membership. Now, why don’t you get back to covering our ass on that latest strike against the purist camp and I’ll get back to my job.”

“Manipulating people?” She straightened, staring down her aristocratic little nose with haughty disapproval.

“I do it so well.” He grinned. “Can I get back to it now?”

“You do that, Jonas.” Her shark’s smile would have made a lesser man wince. “And I’ll consider your defense in case you get caught. Of course, you could always plead insanity.”

He growled warningly. Not that the rumbling of danger affected Jess in the least. She smiled back at him complacently, turned and sauntered back to the sofa.

Damn woman. Thank God she hadn’t turned out to be his mate; they would have killed each other.

CHAPTER 9

She couldn’t allow him to ever touch her again. She wasn’t going to allow him to touch her again.

What the hell had happened? Since when did Scheme Tallant allow her hormones to drown out her common sense?

The next evening, her head propped on her hand, Scheme watched what had to be the sixth hour of some insane rerun.

Of course it wasn’t any more insane than the urges she was fighting within herself. The need to join Tanner on the couch, to stretch out along his hard body and run her tongue over every inch of his golden flesh.

Instead, she was forcing herself to watching some incurably deranged sitcom.

Gilligan’s Island
? It had been ancient even when she was a child. Not that she had ever watched it. Her father hadn’t considered television a productive form of entertainment for his child. But sometimes, at the girls’ academy she had attended, the other students had watched it.

Scheme had managed to drown it out then while she studied. There was nothing to study now. Except Tanner.

He was stretched out on the couch, his feet crossed at the ankles, his arm thrown behind his neck as he watched the show with a quirk on his lips. He was impossibly relaxed despite the obvious hard-on filling out his jeans. Despite the tension building inside her.

“CNN is much more informative,” she finally said, dazed from yet another of Gilligan’s bumbling accidents as well as her own arousal.

“CNN is depressing,” he grunted with a spark of amusement as he kept his gaze on the television. “I’m pretty up on world affairs. And this is my vacation. I don’t watch CNN on vacation.”

“Do you do anything besides watch television while you’re on vacation?” she asked, frustrated. “As long as I’ve been here, I have yet to see you do anything worthwhile.”

“I fuck while I’m on vacation too,” he answered, not taking his eyes from the television. “Want to provide that little entertainment for me? We had fun with it last night.”

She glowered back at him.

“Didn’t think so.” He still hadn’t taken his eyes off the screen. “You know, darlin’, you need to decide one way or the other what you want here.”

She sighed in complete boredom. Even the books on the shelf were light reading rather than anything thought-worthy. There were even romances. Not that she didn’t enjoy romances, as long as they were explicit in nature and hot enough to singe. The ones on the shelf weren’t.

“You’re killing me,” she said and sighed. “If you’re out to torture me, you’ve succeeded.”

He flicked his gaze over to her with a hint of sexual heat.

“How did I manage that?” The action on the screen drew his gaze back.

“You’ve watched at least six hours of this, Tanner. Gilligan is getting on my nerves here,” she sneered. “He’s a twit. He couldn’t walk down a city street without being shot for stupidity.”

“He’s not on a city street.” He grinned, a chuckle leaving his lips as a man in an obvious gorilla suit terrorized the castaways. The show wasn’t exactly heavy on special effects.

“It’s a good thing. A twelve-year-old has more common sense.”

“It’s a show, Scheme,” he chastised her gently. “It’s for your enjoyment. It’s not attempting to mirror reality.”

“Good thing.” She rolled her eyes. “A little reality break would be nice though. A half hour of CNN might save my sanity.”

“Your sanity isn’t high on my list of priorities,” he assured her, chuckling at Gilligan’s predicament once again.

She pulled herself to her feet, wrapping her arms across her chest as she began to pace the room. Not that it bothered him. In the past hours she had learned there was very little that pulled his attention from that asinine rerun.

“Where are we at least?” she asked. “You could tell me that much.”

“In the middle of a mountain,” he answered drolly.

She hated men. She really did.

“Where is the mountain?” she grated out.

“In a mountain chain.”

“Which frickin’ mountain chain, Tanner? For God’s sake, you could at least tell me where I’m at.”

She turned and glared at him. He hadn’t taken his attention from the show. He was, for the most part, ignoring her.

“What would it hurt?” she asked.

“What would it hurt to tell me why you received that beating you took before that your ex-lover was talking about?” he retorted, his voice casual, almost unconcerned.

Wasn’t the beating last month enough? Did you have to keep pushing your luck?

Chaz’s words vibrated through her mind. Hell, what would it hurt to give him that much? To play his game to a point.

Scheme stared at him for long tense moments. “Will you let me have a half hour of CNN?”

His head turned, his thick lashes shielding the expression in his eyes.

“If it’s the truth.”

She inhaled roughly. “I didn’t turn in a report that came through of a Breed mission in New Mexico. Because of it, Father wasn’t able to make certain there was an experienced team in place to gain information he needed.”

Information on the first Leo, a Breed Cyrus had spent decades searching for.

That got Tanner’s attention. His eyes narrowed further.

“Do you know what the information was?”

“That wasn’t part of the question,” she reminded him tensely. “I answered you honestly.”

“But not fully.” He shrugged. “I don’t want half-truths.” His attention went back to the television show.

“The information was on the first Leo,” she answered. “He’s been searching for him for decades and still has no clue where to look. The information he lost out on, to an unknown source, was supposed to be that location. Now will you please change the fucking channel?” she yelled back at him.

The channel flipped. CNN blazed back at her with glorious color. Monday, September 5, 2023, and it was ten a.m. A time, a date. A quick calculation told her she had been there four days. She moved back into her chair, her attention focused on the television and the world events she’d been missing out on.

She was a CNN junkie; she couldn’t help it. She could watch the world news and sometimes predict what her father would put into place.

“Father will send a team into Colombia,” she murmured as the reporter announced a story concerning terrorist activity in Bogotá. “He likes the South American factions the best. They’re easier to control than those in the Middle East.”

Tanner sat up slowly.

“What makes you think that?”

“The name of the group the reporter gave,” she replied. “The leader of that group has been in contact with Cyrus several times. Each time they make the news, Cyrus sends a team down with cash and training support. The leader kisses his ass and makes him feel like a father figure. He likes that.”

“Who would he send?”

Scheme’s lips twitched. “He would have sent Chaz. Now that he’s dead, I would guess he’ll send Dog. Dog is his top Coyote Breed. Very cold-blooded, with an excellent record of success in his missions.”

“Dog has failed every mission against the Breeds,” Tanner growled.

“Did he?” Scheme asked archly. “Or did he gather information the Council needed concerning Sanctuary’s defenses and their teams’ security protocols? You would do well to begin creating shifts in how you defend the base as well as how your teams call in for support or to report in. It won’t be long before the Council programmers crack your security codes if you keep using the same ones. The spy he has within Sanctuary has already managed to help crack several key points to the code.”

He leaned back in the couch and watched her as she continued to track the news.

“And you’re telling me this why?” he asked.

“Because I want another half hour.” She watched the next report intently. “Take that senator, for example.” She nodded to the screen. “Father has been courting him for years; he’s certain to have enough information against him soon to begin blackmailing him in any vote concerning the Breeds that comes up in the Senate. That particular senator has a daughter who isn’t always as careful as she could be. Father will have what he needs within the year, I expect.”

“That information has already come through the Bureau,” Tanner informed her.

She shot him what she hoped was a surprised look.

“Someone is on the ball then.”

“So it would appear,” he muttered thoughtfully.

Scheme ignored him. As the news stories flashed across the screen, she settled back and watched intently. She knew of several missions her father was putting together to go into the Middle East and help heat up yet another conflict there. The more politicians were concerned with the terrorists reaching out from the desert states, the less focus they put on racial issues flaring up at home. Specifically, the Breed issues.

As world news shifted from overseas to the States, the story of the general’s missing daughter flashed across the screen.

Scheme tensed as her father’s expression, lined with supposed grief, filled the screen.

“Whatever Scheme has done, she doesn’t deserve to die,” he was saying in response to the reporter’s claim that she might have been kidnapped in retaliation for the attack against the Breed base, Sanctuary, several months before. “If she’s used my contacts and my resources to inflict more pain on the Breeds, then it should be dealt with through the proper channels. Justice will not be served by hurting her or, God forbid, killing her.”

Her lip curled as the screen blackened.

Her gaze swung to Tanner and the remote he was lowering to the couch beside him.

“Turn it back on,” she snapped. “I want to hear it.”

“Your half hour is over. Actually, it turned into close to forty minutes. You owe me for the extra time.”

“Like hell. Turn it back on.”

The lying bastard. She knew her father was a monster; she had known it for years, for most of her life, but she had never realized what a consummate actor he truly was.

Tanner stared back at her, unconcerned. “No.”

Her fists clenched at her sides. “Why?” she snapped. “Afraid I might actually believe his lies? That I might cause you more trouble to return to his loving arms?” she sneered.

“No,” he said softly. “I’m more worried that if I have to smell the scent of your pain much longer, I’ll end up losing control and go after his throat myself. Which would do nothing to help you.”

She sneered hatefully. “Of course it would bother you that he beat me,” she snarled. “Now, why didn’t I think of that? A Breed would, of course, be concerned for a Tallant’s welfare.”

Not.

She knew better than that.

“You didn’t rescue me from Chaz, Tanner—you kidnapped me for your own ends and you’re keeping me here for the same reason. Is it all about fucking me?” she bit out sarcastically. “Oh, yeah, I can just see that one. You’re just dying to fuck the daughter of the man who tortured your entire fucking family.” Cold, hard mockery finished the sentence. She knew better. “Just tell me what you want, Tanner. What is the cost of my freedom?”

“Your safety.”

She glared back at him, her expression twisted with disbelief. Only her father’s spy would care how she intended to cover her own ass.

“My safety,” she repeated chillingly. “Tell you what. Release me, give me a secured cell phone, and within hours, I’ll be safe. I promise you that. All you have to do is let me go.”

“Tell me who you would call first.” He rose from the couch with a smooth flex of muscle. “The same bastard who stole that information in New Mexico last month?”

“I could only get so lucky,” she snapped. “No, Tanner, my contact isn’t your unknown thief. And who it is is none of your business. Now let me go.”

She stood in place as he stalked closer to her, his body rippling with tension, his eyes swirling with it. Like this, he reminded her more of the animal than the man. He had the same controlled, graceful movements of the Bengal. Almost lazy, calculating, every bone and muscle flexing with an innate animal grace.

She couldn’t control the shiver when he touched her though. When his hands settled on the thin silk covering her hips and his chest brushed against her suddenly distended nipples.

“I can’t let you go,” he said softly, his head lowering until her vision was filled with the sexual intensity in his gaze.