Rafferty, the newest arrival, blinked when he saw his friend and employer of several years. Josh had lost weight, he realized, and there was something different in his eyes, something almost haunted. “Hello, Josh.”
“Rafferty.” Josh smiled a little. “Come to keep me out of jail, or what?”
“You been ignoring your parking tickets?”
“No.”
“Well, then, I’m just here as an advisor. I think.” He looked at Zach, who nodded.
“I thought he should be here, Josh. Things are beginning to look damn complicated.”
Josh crossed his arms over his chest and laughed faintly with no humor. “I might have known I couldn’t even conduct a private courtship without trouble of some kind.” His life was a public one, and Josh had learned over the years that nothing could be simple for him. Then he shot Rafferty a quick look. “In case they didn’t convince you, that dossier on Raven is a bundle of lies—or some awful mistake.”
“They convinced me.”
“Fine.” Josh looked at Zach. “So what’s funny?”
“Well, as I said, we dug deeper. And all of a sudden, people aren’t talking to us. With a vengeance. And Lucas’s contact in the intelligence community just closed down tight as a drum.”
“I couldn’t get the time of day from him,” the investigator confirmed. “It smells, Josh.”
Josh, who knew quite a bit himself about intelligence games, frowned. “A cover-up?”
“No, just dead silence. And my instincts are yelling that we’re about to be warned off. Somebody doesn’t want us digging into Raven Anderson’s background.”
“Travers?”
“The odor doesn’t drift from that direction. Federal, I’d say.”
Josh thought of the keen intelligence in violet eyes. “You think it’s possible she might be an operative for one of the agencies?”
“It’s possible. It’s also possible,” Lucas said evenly, “that they’ve got an eye on her and don’t want us mucking around and screwing up their game plan.”
“No.”
Lucas slid a glance toward Zach, then said very softly, “I lifted a few prints off the car this morning. They match the file.”
“The file’s fabricated. I don’t know why, but I know it’s fake.” Utter certainty.
Glances were exchanged between the security man, the attorney, and the investigator and a decision silently reached and affirmed among the three of them.
“All right,” Zach said. “We go from there. And working from that premise, Josh, I say we back off. Now.”
“I agree,” Rafferty said, and Lucas nodded.
It took Josh only a moment to realize why the suggestion had been made, and he went cold all over. He should have seen it, would have seen it except that he’d been too involved, too bent on finding out what was going on.
“If we keep digging—” he murmured, breaking off.
Rafferty spoke quietly. “If she’s undercover—the only logical explanation for a fabricated background like hers—and we work like hell to expose that cover as a fake, we could put her in very great danger. Especially with a man like Leon Travers involved. Whatever’s going on, he’s at the hub of it.”
“Look at it this way,” Lucas said. “It’s been rumored for years that Travers is very heavily into white slavery, but nobody’s been able to pin a thing on him. Now, within the last few weeks, a lady enters his life. A lady with a rock-solid criminal background and a CIA report that she represents international interests in that area. If that background and that report are false, then there’s only one good reason for it. I think somebody’s setting Travers up. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“And if we poke our noses in …” Rafferty mused.
“He could turn on Raven,” Josh murmured, his face gray, fear for her twisting his guts and sending ice through his veins. “Smell a setup and decide to cover his tracks.”
Josh had seen the results of evil minds at work far too many times in his life, and the thought of Raven trapped unsuspectingly, at the mercy of one such as Travers, filled him with agony. There were so many things a brutal man could do to a woman, so many ways to hurt her, scar her inside and out for life … even to the point where death would be a welcome release.
“You’re at risk too,” Zach said, going on even when Josh gestured dismissively. “Travers has his own intelligence network, and from all reports it’s damned good. We’ve taken the usual precautions in checking into her background, but we didn’t know what we were up against. If Travers got suspicious, he’d find out quick enough that you’re behind it. And he knows damned well who you are, Josh. He knows you’ve helped law enforcement and intelligence agencies before, and he knows how you feel about criminal activities on his grand scale. He could decide to go after you.”
“I would, in his place,” Lucas said flatly. “You’re more than just a threat to him, Josh. You’re a deadly danger. You have very powerful friends, and you could make a hell of a lot of trouble for him if you decided to.”
It was Rafferty who added the clincher. “And if Travers should discover that your interest in Raven is personal, he’ll have a lever to use against you.”
“I have to see Raven,” Josh said hoarsely, reaching for the phone. “Warn her. I have to tell her what I’ve done—”
“What we’ve done,” Zach said.
Across town in a shabby apartment building, and roughly an hour before Josh and his lieutenants had reached their conclusions, Kelsey hunched forward, staring at a computer screen. His eyes widened as information scrolled past for endless moments, then he swore softly and reached for the telephone.
“Hello?” a cool voice answered.
“Is Susan there?” Kelsey asked cheerfully.
“You have the wrong number,” the cultured voice of Raven told him.
“Sorry.” He hung up, knowing that this had been as good a time as any to use their emergency, one-time-only code; he had to see Raven, and quickly.
He reviewed the information his computer offered, shaking his head unconsciously. Damn. Double damn. How in hell were they going to deal with this mess? Trust Raven to go and fall in love with the one man who could ruin everything.
It was only a matter of time, he thought, until Travers found out from his intelligence network that Joshua Long had been digging into Raven’s background.
The Joshua Long, dammit, known far and wide as an extremely brilliant, powerful, wealthy … and honest man.
What could they do? Bluster it out, find some reason for Long’s interest in Raven that wouldn’t send Travers berserk? Recruit Long and somehow make the situation reasonable and no threat to Travers? Push up the timetable and trust to blind luck that they’d have the job done before Travers knew anything at all?
Kelsey made a second call, scrambling it at his end and routing it so that it would take endless time to trace.
He needed advice from the top.
FOUR
ALL FOUR MEN jumped in surprise when the door of the suite was suddenly assaulted by clearly angry fists. Absolutely furious fists. Zach, who was nearest, went to peer cautiously through the peephole, then swore audibly in a surprised tone and quickly opened the door. A second later, he found himself shoved rather unceremoniously aside to allow the entrance of what was obviously an avenging fury.
“Out of my way!”
Josh, who had been chain-smoking and listening to the endless ringing in his ear, dropped the receiver home, stubbed out his latest cigarette, and rose to his feet swiftly. “Raven!”
Flashing violet eyes seared past a lawyer and an investigator, both climbing to their feet, and fixed on Josh. “You.” She advanced on him. “Do you know what you’ve done? Do you have any idea what you’ve done? I ought to—”
Heedless of both her anger and the fascinated presence of his lieutenants, Josh yanked her somewhat roughly into his arms and kissed her thoroughly, his relief almost overpowering. She was safe. For now, at lea
st, she was safe.
For an instant, Raven melted against him, but then anger resurfaced and she fought free of him. “No, dammit! Now I know why you’re so good at this. You’re a damned playboy, you’ve been practicing for years.”
Varied deep tones of laughter jerked her attention away from Josh, and she whirled to stare at the three men she’d barely noticed until then. “Who the hell are you?” she snarled. In her present mood she would have made the same furious demand of the devil if he’d stood before her breathing fire and complete with horns and pitchfork.
Josh rested his hip on the edge of his desk and grinned despite himself. This new aspect of Raven’s personality intrigued him, and he eyed her as he murmured introductions.
Hands on her hips, magnificent eyes blazing, Raven turned her attention to a suddenly uncomfortable Lucas. “You asked questions at my apartment,” she accused him. “And you followed me; I thought I’d lost you.”
“I’ve had a lot of practice,” Lucas muttered, more than a little annoyed with himself for having been spotted.
“So have I,” she retorted, plainly angry. “And at more than losing a tail; follow me again and you’ll find out a few other things I’ve had practice at. I can promise you they’re painful.”
Settling his bulk back into a chair, Zach said, “If the jury were still out, I guess that’d bring it in quick enough. We were right, Josh.”
Raven was still too angry to guard her tongue, not in the least because finding that Josh Long actually did have a kingdom, an empire, really, had shaken her more than a little. She skewered the big security chief with a glare. “Jury? You’d all be hung for what you’ve done! And I’d hold the damned rope. Months—months—of work down the drain because lover boy here couldn’t resist throwing his weight around.”
Willingly, Josh drew the inevitable explosion to himself rather than to his lieutenants; he was nothing if not fair, and it had been his fault that they’d probed into her background. He said, “If you’d been honest with me—”
Raven turned to give him a look that should have shriveled him on the spot. “I didn’t know you from Adam’s house cat,” she snapped, ignoring a choke of laughter from behind her. “And I don’t shoot my mouth off every chance I get.” Belatedly realizing that in fact she was doing just that, Raven fell silent and continued to glare at him.
Josh looked past her at his friends. “Would you excuse us?”
Rafferty, the last out the door, glanced back to say solemnly, “Maybe I should stay, Josh. You might need somebody to uphold your rights.”
Josh lifted an eyebrow at him, holding on to his dignity as much as possible after having been violently labeled a playboy and “lover boy” in front of his men. Rafferty laughed and closed the door softly as he left.
Looking at Raven and fighting the desire to take her back into his arms, Josh said quietly, “I was trying to reach you just now before you came in.” He nodded toward his absent friends. “They made me realize what I’d done. I’m sorry, Raven. I wasn’t thinking. That fabricated dossier on you just … I almost went out of my mind.”
Raven turned abruptly and walked to the window, staring out. When Kelsey had summoned her with their emergency code, she hadn’t even bothered to assume a disguise; she had simply switched cars and taken pains to make certain she wasn’t followed. And since Leon was at a board meeting, she’d felt reasonably safe in charging over here to confront Josh.
She was dressed as she’d been when Kelsey called, in a white silk dress that clung lovingly to her breasts and waist before flowing out in a full skirt to brush her knees. And she was wearing the makeup for her role, nothing heavy, but a suggestion of catlike mystery slanted her eyes due to soft shadowing, and the planes of her face, expertly contoured, seemed sharpened, curiously exotic.
Very softly, Josh said, “I could guess the role you’re playing even without the file on you. A woman of mystery, seductive but never seduced. Igniting fire, but never burning herself. Spinning the threads of a web that never catches her.” Abruptly and on a rueful note, he added, “You should meet my sister.”
Raven ignored the apparent non sequitur. Instead, she thought of his summation of her role, and almost laughed. Judging by the performance she just enacted for his men, she wasn’t as good an actress as Josh seemed to think. Damn him for making her lose control, she thought, but there was no venom in the reflection, not even anger.
“Raven—”
“Why couldn’t you listen to me,” she asked, striving to keep her voice even. “Why did you have to probe?”
“It was too late to stop,” he answered soberly. “We had already been digging into your background. And after I left you at the penthouse, I was so afraid you were in over your head, so afraid you’d get hurt.”
“I was perfectly safe.” She looked at him. “Then.”
Josh drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Raven, I’d give everything I have to take back all the probing, to get you out of the danger I’ve put you in.” She was, he thought dimly, looking at him rather oddly.
“Tell me something,” Raven requested. “Just what is it you believe I’m involved in?”
He didn’t hesitate. “I believe you’re working with or for someone who wants to put Leon Travers behind bars for good. Probably on charges relating to white slavery.”
She never changed expression; her professional mask was in place now. “I see. Well, Kelsey seemed to be convinced you’d figure it out quickly.”
“Kelsey?”
“My partner.”
Questions leaped to Josh’s mind, but he held them back. He’d done enough damage already with his questions. “It was the only thing that made sense,” he said. “Zach turned up that file on you pretty quickly and I—couldn’t believe it. You were gone, out of reach; all I had was that damned file burning itself into my brain. I had to disprove it. That’s why I went to the penthouse.”
“You thought I was Leon Travers’s mistress.”
“No,” he said quickly. “I knew there had to be a reason, an explanation—”
Raven laughed, a sound with no amusement. Her eyes, briefly, were hard with remembered pain. “That wasn’t the impression you gave me in the penthouse.”
He took a step toward her, then halted as she stiffened visibly. “Raven, please try to understand. I had fallen in love for the first time in my life with a wonderful, beautiful woman with laughing eyes. All I knew was that I loved her. And then, with no time granted to get closer to her, she’s gone. And in front of me is a file, and a picture, and the certainty that she’s staying in Travers’s penthouse.”
“You believed it.” She knew she wasn’t being fair, knew all too well the evidence had been damning. But the pain was still in her and she couldn’t be professional about it.
He took another step, his eyes direct and steady, his face a little pale. “No. I was half out of my mind, but no matter how wild I was, I couldn’t believe it of you. That’s why I kept digging, Raven. That’s why I couldn’t let it alone.”
“I asked you to trust me.”
“I did. But I was afraid for you.”
With an effort that broke something inside of her, Raven turned her eyes from him and stared out the window. She could literally feel his tension, his intense drive to convince her. The peculiar empathy hardly surprised her, since it was familiar by now, but she did wonder vaguely how a man could look as calm as Josh usually did while hiding the powerful emotions she could feel emanating from him.
But, then, wasn’t she hiding her own emotions? The thought had barely occurred when Raven felt the sting of tears, and knew her own surface control was being stripped away. Damn the man! He had destroyed years of training and experience. Fiercely, she blinked away the tears.
“Raven.”
His voice was near, too near, and she moved almost convulsively to escape it. But his hands fell on her shoulders and she was turned to face him. And it was too much, just suddenly too much. She had to do
something. Those years of training and experience exploded within her, and Raven reacted as if some murderous fiend had laid hands upon her.
With blinding speed and sharp-honed reflexes, she twisted in an expert move that not twenty people in the entire world would have been able to match or counter. In theory—and, until now, in practice—her attacker would have been on the floor, completely unconscious.
Instead, Raven’s move was countered with equally blinding speed, even with the handicap of his determination not to hurt her. Breathless and shaking, she looked up into his eyes, both her wrists caught at the small of her back and her body locked helplessly against his. He held her trapped. The deep V neckline of her dress had shifted during her violent movement so that one shoulder had slipped downward, and she said absolutely nothing as Josh lifted his free hand to gently smooth the white silk back into place.
Gazing into violet eyes that were both angry and stunned, he said softly, “You’ve been well taught. But so have I.”
Her voice was husky. “There aren’t twenty people in the world who could counter that defense.”
“Twenty-two. My sister and I were taught secretly.”
She was dizzily conscious of the feeling of her breasts pressed against his hard chest, of his thighs against her own. But she held her voice steady. “Why secretly?”
The hand at her shoulder lifted to gently brush back a strand of her long hair, and his eyes followed the movement fleetingly until his hand lay against her neck warmly. “My stepfather thought it best. If no one knew my sister and I could defend ourselves, we had an ace up our sleeves.”
Raven swallowed, aware suddenly of throbbing desire; she wasn’t sure if it was hers or his. It didn’t matter. “Why was it necessary? Because you were wealthy?”
“Partly.” His voice had deepened, grown husky. “But also because my stepfather is Stuart Jameson.”
Her eyes widened; she might not have been familiar with the social and business scene, but the top scientific circles held no faces that would have been strange to her. “I heard him lecture years ago. He talked to us about worst-case scenarios; he said you always had to plan for the worst, and know what you’d do if it happened.”