Cindy Dees - The Medusa Proposition

The man fleeing before her went flying, tumbling head over heels and crashing into a bush. Paige hit the dirt beside the man and Tom slammed flat beside her. “You okay?” he bit out.

“Yeah. You?”

“Good. What about the other guy?”

Paige reached up awkwardly with one hand and felt the downed man’s neck. “Dead. Sounded like a sniper rig.”

He agreed with her assessment of the lone gunshot.

She muttered, “You need to get out of here. I can handle this on my own.”

“Yeah, well, you’re stuck with me.”

“I mean it, Tom. Go back inside. You’ll be safe there.”

“I don’t give a damn about safe. I want to know who just killed the guy who tried to kill me.”

She glared at him in the darkness. Although she sounded pissed, she looked closer to panicked. “I won’t have your death on my hands! You’ll be safe inside, and I need you to get undercover right now.”

“Not happening.”

Her mental wheels were turning so hard he could almost see them as she tried to cook up some reason to make him go inside. Time for a little distraction. “You packing?” he muttered.

“Where in this dress am I going to stow a weapon?”

He grinned as his hard gaze scanned the area. Too much cover out here. They’d never spot the shooter. Besides, assuming the sniper had killed his intended target, the guy would have already left the area.

“How ‘bout you?” she asked in turn, her head swiveling all around in search of the latest assassin. “You armed?”

“Nah. Hotel security forbade it,” he answered in disgust.

She glanced at him in surprise. “And you actually followed the rules?”

He snorted. “I sure as hell won’t from now on. Who’s the dead guy?”

“Dunno. His name badge says he’s conference security. Goes by Claude Dufresne. He looks European.”

He raised a skeptical brow. “And how does a European look?”

She answered absently as she rummaged in the dead man’s pockets. “Bad teeth covered with nicotine stains from unfiltered cigarettes.”

Okay, he’d give her that one. A certain group of Europeans certainly fit that set of parameters.

She continued under her breath, “His credentials look legitimate. I think he actually was conference security.”

“We’ll have to verify that. If this meeting is compromised, we’ve got a big problem on our hands.” A huge problem, in fact. “It’ll be a mess if the conference has to be delayed or rescheduled—”

She interrupted his train of thought as he started to spin out the alarming possibilities if this economic summit failed. “Tom, you’ve got a bigger problem than that. Someone just tried to kill you.”

“You don’t know that for sure—”

She cut him off briskly. “I was looking directly down the bore of this guy’s weapon. The back of your head was his target.”

“I didn’t hear a shot.”

“He had a silencer on the weapon. I saw the sideways flash when he fired.”

He frowned, still skeptical.

She added with scant patience, “The cops can recover the round and do a ballistics analysis to confirm it. But in the mean time, I’ve got to get you undercover. Have you spotted the second shooter?”

“Nope.”

“We’ve got to assume he’s still out there, then. Stay low and follow me.”

He jolted. Follow her? She could follow him. He retorted, “I’ll go first.”

“You’re the target. I’ll go first.”

“You’re the girl—”

“Shut up, Rowe.”

Well, okay then. He tried another tack. “You’re not exactly dressed to crawl around out here.” “I’ll survive. Let’s go.”

He watched in shock as she hiked up her ball gown around her hips and commenced scrabbling along in a shockingly efficient low crawl, her belly barely an inch off the ground. It took huge strength do that. Where in hell did Paige Ellis develop that kind of power? He knew male Special Forces soldiers who couldn’t do it that well.

Shouting voices in the distance sounded like they were approaching. The cavalry coming to the rescue, no doubt. Paige stopped in front of him in the shadow of an overhanging banyan tree. He pulled up beside her, elbow to elbow. The length of her thigh pressed against his, strong and slender. And damned if she still didn’t smell good.

She glanced sidelong at him, a glint of humor in her eyes. “Wanna stick around to talk to the authorities? The way I hear it, you like them about as much as you like journalists.”

He snorted. “Snakes or lizards—take your pick. I suppose you’re going to want to dust yourself off and jump in front of a news camera and cover this, aren’t you?”

She frowned. “It’ll be a hell of a breaking story. Unfortunately, I have somewhere else to be this evening.”

He matched her scowl, inexplicably irritated. “You got a hot date or something?”

“Or something.” She pushed up to her hands and knees and then to a standing crouch. “You have fun evading the cops, Tom.”

“You’re leaving me?”

“Now that every security guy on the island is converging on this garden, I expect you’re about as safe as you’re ever going to be. Our shooter is either bugging out right now or is already gone. He won’t stick around for the entire French Polynesian police force to surround him.”

She was right, but for some reason, he didn’t like the idea of her leaving him. There was something electric about her presence. She stood upright and commenced dusting off her gown. “Need help with that?” he asked.

She glanced at him. “Lay a hand on me and you’ll withdraw a bloody stump, buddy.”

He snorted with laughter. “Big words from a little girl.”

She turned and stalked off into the shadows. He glanced down, perplexed. Barefoot. Again. She’d been barefoot on the beach this morning, too. He’d noticed then that she had nice feet. High arches and pretty toes with sassy red nail polish. He jogged after her and caught up. “Where are you headed?”

“Back to my place. Thought I might clean out my refrigerator.”

“Ah.”

They walked quickly back toward the hotel, dodging the bulk of the security personnel streaming toward the source of the gunshot. Without warning, Paige grabbed his arm and yanked him off the path into a stand of bushes that had some sort of sharp, prickly frond.

He murmured under his breath, “I knew you were attracted to me, but I had no idea you were this desperate.”

She glared at him and whispered, “They would spend all night questioning us, and meanwhile you wouldn’t be getting any safer. I need to get a security perimeter set up around you.”

A pair of police officers raced past them. Another pair. Lots of shouting erupted behind them in the vicinity of the dead man.

Paige stalked back out to the path and took off toward the hotel without waiting to see if he caught up with her. A security perimeter, huh? It kinda made a guy feel loved. This could turn out to be an interesting conference, after all. Not to mention, damn, she was fun to tease. She rose to the bait so easily for him.

They’d almost reached the brightly lit hotel before he broke the charged silence by asking, “Who’s coming to collect Ando?” Maybe now that someone had tried to kill him, she’d be a little more forthcoming with him. And indeed, she was.

She answered, “An American forensics team. They’ll try to determine cause of death and look for anything else on the body that might help catch the killer.”

“This is going to make a hell of a story for you.”

She threw him an exasperated look. “If I was going to break the story, I’d have done it this morning when I found that bag on the beach.”