Undercover Lover (6 page)

Tipped off by a leggy model, the golden boy himself looked up from his table, his eyes searching for and finding Günter as he circumvented the dance floor. Trapped, Weber flashed an overly bright smile and waved. Günter clenched his fists at his sides as he closed in on the table.

“What brings you out of your lair, Gun?” Weber shouted over the din, his expression conveying a friendly intimacy Günter knew neither of them felt.

He’d known Weber for years as Tallis’ manager and friend before Weber’s almost-criminal actions against Tallis’ girlfriend had left him without a job, but with a very big grudge. Whether that grudge was the reason Günter’d come here tonight remained to be seen.

“I’m on the hunt,” Günter answered, telling a partial truth to lower Weber’s guard.

“Join us.” Weber waved one manicured hand in a magnanimous gesture. Günter glanced at his companion and he took the hint. “Lila, this is Günter Faust. Best security man in the biz.”

Günter frowned at the compliment. Lila, the barely legal pop star, pouted up at him. He shoved down the urge to roll his eyes and instead bent down to place the requisite air kiss to her cheek.

“Patrón?” Weber waggled an empty shot glass. “Or perhaps something a little more fun?”

The man had an amazing amount of gall, pretending to be his friend after the shit he’d pulled. Still, the
fun
he’d suggested might be of interest, so Günter pretended to play along.

“What have you got in mind?”

A knowing grin accompanied Weber’s reply. “Bengal. Fresh out of the best lab in three boroughs.”

“Sorry. On the job. Can’t get that fucked up,” Günter said with false regret. “Who’s your supplier?”

He felt Lila Trent’s interest stir, but kept his eyes firmly on Weber, whose smile turned smug.

“Got a couple of bills? I can have someone get in touch.”

Gritting his teeth, Günter tossed a bundle of cash Weber’s way.

“Thanks. I have a question and then I’ll be gone.” The effort it took to keep a civil tongue in his head just might kill him, but there was no use burning the bridge until he’d crossed it.

Weber tucked the money in his jacket. “Shoot.”

“Now there’s a thought,” Gun muttered before asking, “Did you hire a thug to accost Tallis’ sister? Drop some
B
on her doorstep?”

Genuine surprise flickered across Weber’s face, marring his forehead with lines that would have had him running for the nearest Botox clinic had he known. The frown lines were quickly overshadowed, however, by the dollar signs in his eyes. Without a doubt he intended to sell the story to the press, and Günter would have kicked himself if he didn’t know the news had already hit the gossip columns on the internet.

“No,” Weber drawled slowly, “but I wish I had. God that’s sweet. Tallis’ sister, a junkie. No wonder you need the name of my supplier.”

Günter had meant to play it cool. Meant to keep the contact open. So it was a surprise to them both when he clutched starched shirt fabric in his fists and hauled Weber from his seat so his toes brushed air.

“I should’ve capped your arse a long time ago, you sheep-shagging bastard.”

Camera flashes popped, asynchronous amidst the dance floor strobes.

Eyes narrowed, Weber stared down at Günter’s fingers and said with no little false bravado, “Threaten me, you threaten the White Tiger.”

A sickening sense of déjà vu fogged Günter’s brain as his past and present collided. He drew back a fist.

“I know about Dublin,” Weber blurted.

Günter’s world upended. Time suspended until a hand rested heavily on his shoulder and he knew it was the bouncer. He dropped Weber on his ass and spun away.

Casting a derisive glance, he said, “Do yourself a favor and keep an eye on this piece of rubbish.”

Like I should have done.

If Günter had been worth his salt he’d have caught Weber at his dangerous games long ago. Instead it had taken Tallis’ girlfriend and a scandal that had made the tabloids a bundle of cash. Until Kyra Martin had blown David’s identity with her authorized exposé about his childhood under witness protection, things had been relatively smooth. Günter’d thought there wasn’t much outside his control, and he’d gotten cocky. Complacent.

More than a little disgusted with himself, he walked out of the club and hailed a cab. White flakes swirled past the window, refracting the neon lights as the car sped uptown. The clock in Times Square told him it was one in the morning. He’d wasted the remainder of the evening and was no better off than when he’d left Jenny locked in that bedroom. Somehow he had to cajole her into telling him the truth. What if she really was a junkie?

No. No way. With everything he knew about Jenny—after how long he’d kept watch over her for Tallis—he’d have known if she had a drug problem. True, he hadn’t kept tabs on her in several months, but still. Nobody developed a habit that fast without exhibiting warning signs. Did they?

He breathed in stale air from the cab and cracked the window in a bid to lessen his tension. The entire situation had him on edge—being close to Jenny, the lack of leads. Without a doubt, someone with inside knowledge had a hand in this. If what Weber had just leaked was true, there was a very good possibility
that someone
was from the exact circles he feared.

The White Tiger. Christ.

And how had Weber found out about Dublin? That information was so classified MI-5 had actually threatened to have him discredited then erased if he so much as breathed a word about his part in the cock-up.

He was still mulling over the sordid variations and possibilities on how this situation could get worse when he walked back into the security flat forty-five minutes later.

“All quiet?” he asked Simon Jakes, his second-in-command, as he tossed his leather car coat on the sofa.

Simon looked up from reading a biography of Genghis Khan, glasses perched on the tip of his nose, scholarly exterior camouflaging a superb fighter and tactician. “She stopped sending your family to hell about an hour ago.”

“So soon?” Günter took water from the fridge, thinking she might appreciate something cold.

“You’ve got a live one in there.”

Günter’s laugh was wry. “Tell me something I don’t already know.”

“Someone shot and killed Brent Weber about thirty minutes ago.”

Plastic ridges wedged into Günter’s palm and the water bottle exploded. Neither man seemed to notice. “Come again?”

“Brent Weber. He was killed leaving Olympus—a shot from a moving car. It came across the feed.” The look Simon leveled over the top of his book asked the unspoken question.

“No, I didn’t kill him.” Green eyes lightened, but Simon’s relief was short-lived when Günter clarified, “But they’re going to assume I did.”

* * * * *

A gentle rocking motion brought Jenny bobbing to the surface of sleep. She’d been dreaming she was a World War II code breaker, pounding away at German missives in a disjointed reality full of air raid sirens and blond double agents.

“Wake up.”

The source of her troubled dreams broke through the remaining tendrils of unreality with a particularly hard shake. She blinked and stared hazily into the same eyes that had haunted her sleep.

“We have to go. Get up,” Günter demanded.

Jenny turned her head in an attempt to get her bearings. Black and silver bed coverings. Mahogany door wide open. The events of the evening flooded back.

“Where?” she asked, her voice thick with sleep.

Cold air met her skin. He’d whipped the covers off the bed. Not knowing when she’d get a change of clothes, she’d stripped down to her bra and panties before going to sleep.

Fear snapped through her. Something was wrong. He didn’t have time to explain. She understood and bounded from the bed. The room spun and he grabbed her upper arm to hold her steady even as he thrust her jeans at her.

“They don’t know about this apartment. You have more time,” a stranger’s voice said from the doorway.

Jenny thrust her legs into her jeans and fumbled with the button.

“We can’t risk being trapped in the building.” Günter pulled her sweater over her head as he spoke and she plunged her arms into the holes. It was on backward and she had to right it.

“The security cameras will pick up your car exiting the garage.” The pronounced r’s in the new man’s accent placed his origins firmly outside New York. Connecticut, perhaps?

“You don’t give me enough credit, mate.” Günter’s voice sounded smug.

The self-assured spark in his eyes was enough to give Jenny’s stomach a little flip. She understood something essential about him in that moment—he lived for danger. For moments like this.

The other man laughed, but the sound was tight. Forced. “I got her bag, our passports, and called Tallis’ pilot. We should be in the air by five a.m. if we can make it to Connecticut without getting picked up.”

Passports?

“Where are we going?” she asked, already knowing she wasn’t going to get an answer.

“Let’s hope the weather holds.” Günter thrust her coat at her. “It’ll slow them down dealing with other problems.”

Jenny glanced out the window and saw it was snowing hard. Tight-lipped, she put on her coat. She could throw a hissy fit and tell them she wasn’t going anywhere until they told her what was going on, but she wasn’t stupid. If she waited ten minutes she could ask all the questions she wanted in the car.

As they left the flat, Günter keyed something into the laptop and said, “That should take care of it.”

The other man had dark-red hair and green eyes. He was slighter than Günter, but really who wasn’t? His attire was so different though, it gave her pause. Wearing tortoiseshell glasses and a tweed jacket, he looked like a professor. A telltale bulge beneath the staid fabric of his jacket, however, said he packed serious heat.

An SUV idled in the underground garage, its interior already warm when she slid into the backseat behind both men. The professor drove and Günter rode shotgun. Swirling snow muffled their passage along the unplowed asphalt, and the city lights cast everything in a surreal glow.

She waited until they were well into Harlem before she spoke. “Günter?”

He didn’t turn, but she saw the tendons tense in his corded neck. Damn, but the man was muscled everywhere. She cleared her throat and forcefully straightened fingers that had begun to clench at the idea of testing each firm bulge.

“Could you introduce me to the professor?” she asked.

Günter’s bark of laughter broke the tension, surprising her with a trickle of delight. She grinned despite herself, meeting their driver’s eyes in the rearview mirror.

“Simon Jakes,” Günter said, “meet Jennifer Ainsley. Ms. Ainsley, Simon, my second.”

A somewhat sheepish raised-brow smile met her in the mirror and she made a split-second decision that she was going to like Simon Jakes a great deal.

“To what do we owe the pleasure?”

Günter twisted around in his seat. Their eyes met and desire arced. It was as if his gaze picked up where they’d left off on the dining room floor hours before. He blinked and she watched him bank his fires.

Mouth set in a grim line he said, “You tell me your story, I’ll tell you mine.”

He was so dogged and unreadable. A knight and a scoundrel all in one. The puzzle and the contradiction—that’s what made him so damn compelling.

“Quid pro quo again?” she asked, tossing her hair out of her eyes.

“Exactly.”

She looked out the window, not wanting to renew their discussion now, but he was right. It wasn’t exactly fair to expect answers from him if she wouldn’t reveal any herself. Otherwise there was no reason to trust her.

“I told you the truth.”

His gaze rested heavily on her. She knew he was searching for signs of a lie.

“I just left out an adjective,” she mumbled as her gaze skittered sideways.

“All right. Which all-important grammatical tidbit did you neglect to impart?” he asked.

She bristled at his mockery. The anger, however, got her through the words, “
Pole
dance class,” before she could take them back.

A slow blink turned his eyes to dark pools of desire. Was he picturing her dancing? She compulsively brought her arms up to cross over her chest although there was no way he could see anything important through the down parka she had zipped to her chin.

“It’s great exercise,” she defended as she blushed. “And I’m not half bad.”

He cleared his throat and faced forward again, shifting his position with a shrug of his torso from the seat. “Is that why you lied? So you wouldn’t be found ridiculous?”

His words sliced at her tattered pride and she jerked the edges together with a resolute, “No.”

“Were you afraid of your brother’s reputation—what the papers would say—if word got out?” he asked, taking another stab at her motivation.

“Somewhat. But more like I wanted five minutes away from his goons,” she groused, still stinging from his earlier guess.