A Game of Chance. Linda Howard
Mac was the only man Maris had ever met whom she couldn’t intimidate, which was one of the reasons she loved him so much. If Mac had decided he was going to ride herd on Maris during her pregnancy, she had little hope of escaping on one of those long, hard rides she so loved.
Zane nodded toward the file on his desk. “You going to tell me about it?”
Chance knew Zane was asking about more than the contents of the file. He was asking why it hadn’t been transmitted by computer, instead of Chance personally bringing a hard copy. Zane knew his brother’s schedule; he was the only person, other than Chance himself, who did, so he knew Chance was currently supposed to be in France. He was also asking why he hadn’t been notified of Chance’s change in itinerary, why his brother hadn’t made a simple phone call to let him know he was coming.
“I didn’t want to risk even a hint of this leaking out.”
Zane’s eyebrows rose. “We have security problems?”
“Nothing that I know of,” Chance said. “It’s what I don’t know about that worries me. But, like I said, no one else can hear even a whisper of this. It’s between us.”
“Now you’ve made me curious.” Zane’s cool blue eyes gleamed with interest.
“Crispin Hauer has a daughter.”
Zane didn’t straighten from his relaxed position, but his expression hardened. Crispin Hauer had been number one on their target list for years, but the terrorist was as elusive as he was vicious. They had yet to find any way to get close to him, any vulnerability they could exploit or bait they could use to lure him into a trap. There was a record of a marriage in London some thirty-five years ago, but Hauer’s wife, formerly Pamela Vickery, had disappeared, and no trace of her had ever been found. Chance, along with everyone else, had assumed the woman died soon after the marriage, either by Hauer’s hand or by his enemies’.
“Who is she?” Zane asked. “Where is she?”
“Her name is Sonia Miller, and she’s here, in America.”
“I know that name,” Zane said, his gaze sharpening.
Chance nodded. “Specifically, she’s the courier who was supposedly robbed of her package last week in Chicago.”
Zane didn’t miss the “supposedly,” but then, he never missed anything. “You think it was a setup?”
“I think it’s a damn good possibility. I found the link when I checked into her background.”
“Hauer would have known she’d be investigated after losing a package, especially one containing aerospace documents. Why take the risk?”
“He might not have thought we would find anything. She was adopted. Hal and Eleanor Miller are listed as her parents, and they’re clean as a whistle. I wouldn’t have known she was adopted if I hadn’t tried to pull up her birth certificate on the computer. Guess what—Hal and Eleanor never had any children. Little Sonia Miller didn’t have a birth certificate. So I did some digging and found the adoption file—”
Zane’s eyebrows rose. Open adoptions had caused so many problems that the trend had veered sharply back to closed files, which, coupled with electronic privacy laws and safeguards, had made it damn difficult to even locate those closed files, much less get into them. “Did you leave any fingerprints?”
“Nothing that will lead back to us. I went through a couple of relays, then hacked into the Internal Revenue and accessed the file from their system.”
Zane grinned. If anyone did notice the electronic snooping, it likely wouldn’t even be mentioned; no one messed with the tax people.
Zack had finished his bottle; his ferocious grip on it slackened, and his head lolled against Chance’s arm as he briefly struggled against sleep. Automatically Chance lifted the baby to his shoulder and began patting his back. “Ms. Miller has been employed as a courier for a little over five years. She has an apartment in Chicago, but her neighbors say she’s seldom there. I have to think this is a long-term setup, that she’s been working with her father from the beginning.”
Zane nodded. They had to assume the worst, because it was their job to do so. Only by anticipating the worst could they be prepared to handle it.
“Do you have anything in mind?” he asked, taking the bottle from Cam’s slackened grip and gently lifting the sleeping baby to his own shoulder.
“Getting next to her. Getting her to trust me.”
“She’s not going to be the trusting sort.”
“I have a plan,” Chance said, and grinned, because that was usually Zane’s line.
Zane grinned in return, then paused as a small security console in the wall dinged a soft alarm. He glanced at the security monitor. “Brace yourself,” he advised. “Barrie and Nick are home.”
Seconds later the front door opened and a shriek filled the house. “Unca Dance! UncaDanceUncaDance-UncaDance!” The chant was punctuated by the sound of tiny feet running and jumping down the hall as Nick’s celebration of his visit came closer. Chance leaned back in his chair and opened the office door a bare second before Nick barreled through it, her entire little body quivering with joy and eagerness.
She hurled herself at him, and he managed to catch her with his free arm, dragging her onto his lap. She paused to bestow a big-sisterly kiss and a pat on the back of Zack’s head—never mind that he was almost as big as she was—then turned all her fierce attention to Chance.
“Are you staying dis time?” she demanded, even as she lifted her face for him to kiss. He did, nuzzling her soft cheek and neck and making her giggle, inhaling the faint sweet scent of baby that still clung to her.
“Just for a few days,” he said, to her disappointment. She was old enough now to notice his long and frequent absences, and whenever she saw him she tried to convince him to stay.
She scowled; then, being Nick, she decided to move on to more important matters. Her face brightened. “Den can I wide your moborcycle?”
Alarm flared through him. “No,” he said firmly. “You can’t ride it, sit on it, lean on it, or put any of your toys on it unless I’m with you.” With Nick, it was best to close all the loopholes. She seldom disobeyed a direct order, but she was a genius at finding cracks to slip through. Another possibility occurred to him. “You can’t put Cam or Zack on it, either.” He doubted she could lift either of them, but he wasn’t taking any risks.
“Thank you,” Barrie said dryly, entering the office in time to catch his addendum. She leaned down to kiss him on the cheek, at the same time lifting Zack from his arms so he could protect himself from Nick’s feet. All the Mackenzie males, at one time or another, had fallen victim to a tiny foot in the crotch.
“Mission accomplished?” Zane asked, leaning back in his chair and smiling at his wife with that lazy look in his pale eyes that said he liked what he was seeing.
“Not without some drama and convincing, but, yes, mission accomplished.” She pushed a feather lock of red hair out of her eyes. As always, she looked stylish, though she was wearing nothing dressier than beige slacks and a white sleeveless blouse that set off her slim, lightly tanned arms. You could take the girl out of the finishing school, Chance thought admiringly, but you could never take the finishing school out of the girl, and Barrie had gone to the most exclusive one in the world.
Nick was still focused on negotiating riding rights on the motorcycle. She caught his face between her hands and leaned down so her nose practically touched his, insuring his complete attention. He nearly laughed aloud at the fierce intent in her expression. “I wet you wide my twicycle,” she said, evidently deciding to cajole instead of demand.
“Somehow I missed that,” Zane murmured in amusement, while Barrie laughed softly.
“You offered to let me ride your tricycle,” Chance corrected. “But I’m too