Dana Marton - Ironclad Cover

“You should probably move in before you get distracted again,” Gina said. “You might trip over one of those men falling at your feet.”

“Jealousy is a very unattractive emotion.”

“Bite me,” Gina responded with dripping cordiality.

“No thanks. I don’t like bitter.” Anita glanced toward the group where Michael was standing. He was showing the group pictures—wouldn’t notice now if she slipped away, wouldn’t follow and get in her way. “Gotta go.”

She made her way toward Cavanaugh, one of only five viable leads—four now, Alexeev had disappeared for good and was presumed dead—their team had been able to scare up after a month of hard work. And even those four…The evidence that tied them to Tsernyakov was circumstantial, at best.

She stopped when she was close enough to Cavanaugh to hear him.

“So he ran naked into the water, swam out to the closest boat and somehow got them to pick him up. Crazy, n’est-ce pas? But nobody can say that Monsieur Clavat is not a good sport.”

His audience laughed with him.

She stepped forward and opened her mouth to speak but, before the small group could take notice of her, an interruption came from the other side. A short, stocky gentleman with bushy eyebrows pressed up against Cavanaugh and murmured something into his ear. Cavanaugh’s smile turned grim for a second, then he pasted on a brand-new jovial expression.

“I apologize, I must step away for a minute. Work, it finds me everywhere,” he said to his companions.

“You know what they say, there’s no rest for the wicked.” The taller of the two women threw him a look of open flirtation.

“And since I’m rather wicked, ma chérie, there’s hardly any rest for me at all,” he responded with a knowing smile before turning and following the guy who’d come for him.

Picture. Anita remembered too late and was only able to get a shot of the other man from the back.

She opened her mouth to call out then snapped it shut again. Right now didn’t seem like the right time to try to talk to Cavanaugh. He looked to be in a hurry. He might just brush her off. And she wanted to find out who the other man was, what he had said to put that look on Cavanaugh’s face. She swiped a flute of champagne from a passing waiter and followed them at a distance that didn’t seem necessary. The men were intent on their destination and never looked back as they hurried to the back of the gallery.

A hallway opened from the inconspicuous nook the men had disappeared into, partially obstructed by heavy, fringed curtains in crimson brocade. She waited a few seconds before stepping in. The hallway ran parallel to the gallery in a half circle, coming out on the other side. She was in time to see one of the tall, solid-wood doors that lined the walls close behind the men.

Now what? She strolled by, looked for cameras without being overtly obvious about it in case she was recorded, but found no evidence of security equipment.

All the doors had mottos painted above them in Latin. She passed Fortior leone justus. The just man is stronger than a lion. The sign above Cavanaugh’s door said Vincit omnia veritas. Truth conquers all things.

She would have liked to think so but she knew, better than most, that real life didn’t work like that. In her own life, truth had conquered nothing and it certainly hadn’t set her free.

She listened by the door and discerned after a few moments that it wasn’t going to get her anywhere. The thick wood blocked everything.

“Where have you gone?” Gina asked through the earpiece.

“In the back.”

“Need me?”

“There’s a curtained-off opening to a hallway. Let me know if someone’s coming.”

“Will do. Be careful.”

Feeling better with Gina watching her back, Anita kept moving in case the men came back out. She didn’t want to be caught loitering right in front of the door.

She needed to find a way to eavesdrop. She headed toward the next room as an idea occurred to her. All the windows were open downstairs to allow in the balmy night air. If the same were true for the upstairs, she might be able to listen in on what was said in Cavanaugh’s room.

The sign above the door proclaimed, Fortuna audenes juvat. Fortune favors the bold.

Anita put her hand on the old-fashioned brass doorknob and took a deep breath, prepared with an excuse if there was anyone in there. The place was empty. And the windows were open. She didn’t bother turning on the lights; enough moonlight filtered in through the giant windows.

She took off her shoes so her heels wouldn’t click on the marble floor—pink marble up here to match the draperies and the frescos on the ceiling. The opulence of the building, which had been built during colonial times, was breathtaking on every level. She stopped near the window and focused on the low, deep voices of the men.

“Then whambandot cor mantakna yesterday…”

She pushed the hair back from her ears, but that didn’t help any. The sounds were too muffled to make out individual words—or not enough of them to put together any meaning.

She thought of the old cup-to-the-wall trick she and her sister, Maria, used to spy on their brothers when they were kids, but a quick glance of the room didn’t net anything the like. She pressed her ear to the silk wallpaper and curled a hand around it. Something of an improvement, but not enough.

She liked to think she was a resourceful woman. There had to be a way.

The room didn’t have a balcony, but wrought-iron railings cupped the nearly floor-to-ceiling windows from the outside. They had a little bump-out on the bottom, six inches wide at most, just enough to hold some balcony boxes that overspilled with fragrant blooms she didn’t recognize. She’d grown up in Maryland and wasn’t familiar with the flora and fauna of the tropics.

She didn’t want to step into the boxes—didn’t want dirt on her feet that might be hard to explain away, didn’t want to leave trampled flowers behind that someone might question later.

She grabbed the railing and placed one foot onto an ornamental scroll in the design. Flat, square bars would have been so much easier. She wished she were wearing anything else but a long gown. She focused all her attention on the task, balancing her weight as she leaned out over the moonlit garden.

Steady now. A tumble to the paved walkway below wasn’t in the plans. And I won’t. Not a good idea to be thinking about falling. Focus on the task. If the mission succeeded, she could erase the worst period of her life and heal the rift in her family, start new with a clean slate. To her, that was worth any risk.

“You can’t get a building permit for that patch of land. I tried before. Environmental setbacks. Same as at Pirate’s Cove,” somebody was saying in the next room.

She could see a sliver of their window and the light spilling from it, but no one stood close enough to glimpse. Not altogether a bad thing, since that meant they couldn’t see her, either. And in any case, she couldn’t have spared a hand to take a picture. Balancing on the curves of the ironwork was tricky enough already.

Noise from the garden below caught her attention. A couple strolled by, holding crystal glasses, having a heated discussion in Italian. Anita held her breath, not daring to step down from the railing, fearing that one might catch the movement from the corner of an eye. She would have looked like a jumper as she was. She didn’t need that kind of attention.

They stopped right under her window.

Diosmio.

The man fell silent. The woman kept on, breathlessly and with high emotion. Then the guy put his free arm around her waist and pulled her to him so suddenly that some of her champagne splashed from the glass. They were kissing the next second.