Cara Summers - No Risk Refused

His mother didn’t turn to them very often anymore, but he had no doubt that he would probably get the assignment. His older brother’s new duties in the Secret Service serving on the Vice President’s security detail were keeping Reid very busy, and the last time he’d talked to Duncan, who worked as a profiler in the Behavioral Sciences division of the FBI, he’d been consulting on a case in Montana.

Then with a frown Cam read the text again. His mom and A. D. MacPherson were in Scotland, and if they’d taken the time to call, his best guess was that something was going on at the castle. From what he’d last heard, Viola MacPherson lived alone there now. The image of a tiny, energetic woman popped into his mind. He hadn’t forgotten her scones or her brownies. Except for Christmas and birthday cards, he hadn’t seen Aunt Vi or visited the castle since his mother had married the successful landscape painter seven years ago. That had been his senior year in college and he’d joined the CIA right away. For five years he’d worked a variety of covert operations overseas. He’d enjoyed the travel and the challenge of the assignments, but when an opportunity had presented itself to transfer to the Domestic Operations section in D.C., he’d been ready for a change. He still worked in the field but his assignments tended to be of shorter duration, and as a side benefit he got to work for an old and dear friend.

The last he’d heard, the MacPherson sisters had been as busy as he, his brothers and their parents, and were pursuing career goals. Not that he knew what they were doing exactly. He’d avoided thinking about them for years.

Especially Adair.

He strode to the window of his office, but it wasn’t the scenery that he saw. It was Adair MacPherson’s face. The image of her standing beneath that stone arch during his mother’s wedding to A. D. MacPherson had been popping into his mind lately. It had been a late-fall wedding. He and his brothers had been tied up in classes so they’d booked flights that arrived on the morning of the ceremony and left that evening.

The picture he’d carried in his mind before that had been of a little girl with red curls and freckles, a face that had frowned easily when he’d teased her, and a temper that he’d enjoyed igniting. Calling her “Princess” usually succeeded in eliciting both responses. But she had a smile that he’d wanted to trigger almost as much as the frown.

What he’d enjoyed most about her during those long summer afternoons when they’d played together was the fact that she was willing to try anything. Eager, in fact. She’d been fun—for a girl.

But what he’d felt at his mother’s wedding had been something else. And that was the image that still lingered in his mind. Her red-gold curls were tied back with a green ribbon. He’d wanted to run his hands through those curls. At nine, her body had been sturdy and athletic. At twenty, it had been slim as a wand, and he’d wanted to explore every single inch of it. Desire was far too tame a word for what he’d felt. But it was her eyes that had nearly finished him off that day. He had no clear idea of how long he had looked into them. But he’d never forget the color—a pale and misty green that he could have sworn he was drowning in.

Cam drew in a deep breath and let it out. He’d wanted her that day in a way he’d never wanted anyone or anything before. In a way he’d never wanted anyone since. And he’d been rash enough to ask her to dance. If she’d agreed, if he’d held her in his arms, he still wasn’t sure what would have happened. Perhaps she’d had some idea of the possible consequences because she’d turned him down flat.

He wasn’t sure why she was popping into his mind more frequently lately. Perhaps because he was back in the States. Perhaps because she’d never really left his mind. Perhaps because it was only possible to avoid something for so long and then …

“Got a minute, Sutherland?”

Cam turned as his boss walked into the room. Seven years ago Daryl Garnett had recruited him to work for the CIA. Cam had trained under the man at the farm and Daryl had been one of his mentors ever since, and he’d invited Cam to join the Domestic Operations section he headed up in D.C.

“I think I just got something on my old nemesis.” Daryl moved around Cam’s desk and taped two photos on the whiteboard that covered nearly one wall. “Meet Gianni Scalzo.”

Cam turned to study the photos. He’d seen one of them before because Daryl carried a smaller version in his wallet, the way a man might carry a photo of his family. But Gianni Scalzo wasn’t family. He was a con man extraordinaire who’d put a bullet in Daryl’s knee and limited his career as a covert field operative.

Since then, Daryl had been steadily working his way up in the training and management side of the Agency, but he’d made a hobby out of tracking Scalzo down.

In the photo that Cam had seen before, Scalzo had long, curly, shoulder-length hair—Mel Gibson in the first Lethal Weapon . In shorts and sunglasses, he looked very much at home on the prow of a sailboat. The man standing next to him in the picture was shorter, less athletic in build, the kind of man that you wouldn’t notice if you passed him on the street. Interpol believed he was Scalzo’s partner. Daryl agreed. Both men were masters at disguise, but the partner had always stayed in the shadows.

The man in the second photo was older. His short dark hair boasted just a sprinkle of gray and he had a well-trimmed mustache and goatee. Not Mel Gibson but he still had a sort of middle-aged movie star quality. Next to him stood a pretty young blonde.

“What do you think?” Daryl asked.

“It’s a difficult call. The more important question is what do you think? You’re the one who met him in person.”

“Allowing for the passage of time, I’m betting they’re one and the same,” Daryl said. “I felt it as soon as I saw the picture. I had one of our techs run a facial analysis of the two photos.”

Cam moved closer to study the two images more closely. “What were the results?”

“Inconclusive.” A tall lanky man in his mid-fifties, Daryl stood shoulder to shoulder with Cam at the whiteboard. “Right now, I’m having someone age the photo of Scalzo on the sailboat.”

“How long have you been looking for Scalzo now?” Cam asked.

Daryl tapped the leg that had retired him from the field. “Fifteen years, three months and nine days.”

“The age difference is about right. Who tipped you off to take a look at the guy?” Cam asked.

“Ben Slack contacted me an hour ago and I asked him to email me the photo,” Daryl said. “He was in your class at the farm.”

Cam remembered Ben, and anyone who had been trained by Daryl would know of his interest in tracking Scalzo down.

“Ben says the Securities and Exchange Commission is ‘looking at’ this guy,” Daryl said. “One problem I’ve always had in tracing Scalzo was that the man avoids getting his picture taken. But this guy is getting married, so he couldn’t very well refuse to have an engagement picture published.”

“What else have you got?” Cam asked.

“If the Securities and Exchange Commission is sniffing around him, he could be using the same M.O. as Scalzo did in Italy, and the same one that he used in Portland a few years ago. I was nearly in time to get him. He changes looks, identities and locations, but the scam he and his partner run remains the same. They target financial planners—some who handle select clients as well as others who manage pension funds. Scalzo is always the front man. He infiltrates the social strata first—buys an estate, joins the right clubs. That’s exactly what this guy has been doing in the Long Island area for the last year and a half. He promises huge returns to his investors and he delivers them. After the recent scandals, that’s enough to bring him to the attention of the Securities and Exchange Commission.”