Navajo Echoes. Cassie Miles
help staring at his bronzed skin and the defined muscles in his arms and chest. To see him naked? Oh, lord, she didn’t think she could stand it. And yet, she’d felt the urge to stand and watch, to climb into the Jacuzzi with him, to rake her fingers through his thick, black hair.
Primly eating the room service burger and fries, she retreated behind her familiar boundaries of self-restraint. Not that Lily was a prude. Far from it. But sex hadn’t been an issue during her college rebellion when she was mostly traveling and didn’t want to be tied down with a relationship. Then, she’d been a cop and spent most of her time hanging around with other cops. Any hint of vulnerability would have made her life a living hell. It was safer not to get involved.
And now? Maybe it was time to lose her virginity, to wave the white flag of surrender and succumb. But not with John Pinto. He was her coworker—a senior agent who probably wasn’t attracted to her the way she was to him.
Though she’d had enough time to calm down, she still couldn’t look at him without drooling. Not even the garish flamingo-patterned Hawaiian shirt she’d bought for him in the hotel shop dampened his outrageous sex appeal.
She forced herself to concentrate on revenge. Oh, yes, she was going to get even. She didn’t know how or when, but sometime—sooner or later—she’d get him all hot and bothered and then walk away. A dangerous game of sexual one-upsmanship. But he’d made the first move.
Apparently unconcerned by her silence, he took the last bite of his hamburger and checked his wristwatch, which was, miraculously, still ticking after the crash. “Nine-thirty,” he said.
Which was two-and-a-half hours before they were scheduled to meet Robert at Pirate Cove. She chose her words carefully; John had already warned her that their room might be bugged. “How long will it take to get there?”
“It’s about three miles from here. A forty-five-minute to an hour walk. Less if we jog.”
She groaned. Though she regularly ran a five-mile workout in the morning, today had been strenuous. Surviving a plane crash wasn’t part of her daily regimen.
She stood and stretched. “I need to keep moving around. If I sit too long, I’m going to stiffen up.”
“I recommend the Jacuzzi.”
“I’ll bet you do.”
She stepped through the sliding glass doors onto the balcony. The sound of calypso music rose from the beach where the hotel was sponsoring a party. A sea-scented breeze teased her senses. Though misty clouds drifted across the night sky, she could still see the shimmer of moonlight on the rolling waves.
John stepped up to the wrought-iron railing beside her. He had designated the balcony as a bug-free area where they could talk more freely. Still, he kept his voice low. “Have you checked the guns?”
“They’ll work.” The Glock automatic tucked into an ankle holster under her loose-fitting beige linen slacks was a reassuring weight. On top she wore a gauzy orange halter—a scrap of material that cost a fortune in the hotel shop.
“You look good,” he said.
Despite her vows of revenge, she responded to his sexy baritone with a shiver of excitement. “Thank you.”
“I hardly notice the bump on your head. You look almost normal.”
“So glad that I’m not too freakishly grotesque.”
Saying she looked “good” wasn’t a compliment on her appearance; he was merely assessing her condition.
“We should join the beach party,” he suggested. “Do some mingling. See if we can pick up any leads.”
“Like finding out who wants to kill us?”
“Could be useful information.”
Though she wasn’t in a party mood, mingling sounded better than spending the next two-and-a-half hours alone with John, imagining what he’d look like in that cheesy red-curtained bed. “I’m ready if you are.”
When they got off the elevator in the hotel lobby, her senses went on high alert. In her prior bodyguard assignments, she’d learned observation techniques, which meant keeping her gaze mobile and watching for anything out of the ordinary. She linked her arm with John’s and turned her head toward the right. The hotel shop where she’d bought their clothing was closed, but the drugstore was still open. A bored-looking clerk rang up a sale and handed a pack of chewing gum to a husky tourist in baggy shorts and a Hawaiian-print shirt. He ran a hand through his short-cropped brown hair. The back of his thick neck was sunburned a dark red.
Even from the back, Lily noticed something familiar about that guy. His posture? The gesture of massaging his scalp? He reminded her of someone she knew in Denver, but she couldn’t quite place him.
She heard a crash from the opposite direction and turned to see a waiter scrambling to pick up the scattered remnants from a room service tray. The reservation clerk at the front desk snapped angrily at the clumsy young man, and he responded with an insult about the clerk’s mother.
When she looked back toward the shop, the husky tourist was gone.
TED HAWLEY PEEKED OUT FROM behind the rack of magazines in the hotel drugstore where he’d taken cover when Lily had glanced in his direction. He was pretty sure that she hadn’t recognized him.
As she strolled out the door, arm-in-arm with that tall Navajo, she made some comment and laughed. If he hadn’t known better, he would have believed that they were lovers on vacation instead of interfering agents of PPS.
It was his job to make sure they didn’t hook up with Robert Prescott—his real target. Prescott needed to die here on Cuerva. The killing of Lily and her boyfriend was a bonus. When he saw them with the Rasta pilot, he came up with a quick way to handle this assignment. Sabotage the plane. It was easy—too easy. They’d survived.
Cute, spunky little Lily Clark led a charmed life, always came out on top. Sure, she was a pretty little thing with her high breasts and her round ass. She’d even looked good in a cop uniform. Not many women could pull that off.
But he knew she wasn’t so sweet and innocent. She’d humiliated him, made him a laughingstock at the precinct. He knew her for the gold-plated bitch she really was.
He was almost glad she’d gotten out of the plane crash alive. He wanted her death to be more personal. He smiled as he adjusted the collar on his black-and-yellow patterned shirt. There were so many slow, painful ways she could die.
Chapter Three
After his years as a bodyguard for celebrities, captains of industry and politicians, John was accustomed to finding himself in spectacular surroundings. Fancy-dress balls. The ski resorts in Aspen. Yachts the size of cruise ships. Custom-designed jets with full bedrooms.
He had trained himself to ignore the ambiance and concentrate on watching and listening for signs of trouble. With Lily at his side, he circled the lit swimming pool on the patio and descended a few stairs to the beach—a long stretch of white sand bordered by silver thatch palms, leafy shrubs and a profusion of exotic flowers that, even in the moonlight, were colorful.
Near the bar, dozens of tourists had gathered. Mostly couples, they danced to the lazy calypso beat. John should have been studying these people, some of whom might want him dead. He should have been looking for hidden weapons, furtive glances and other subtle signals of guilt. Instead, his gaze drifted toward the luminescent waves. The sea breeze kissed his skin, and the exhaustion he should have been experiencing faded away. The music of the steel drums and stringed instruments made him want to dance. He wanted to order a sweet rum drink with an umbrella from the bar in a tiki shack, to kick back and revel in this Caribbean night.
Beside him, Lily’s wispy blond hair framed her upturned face. She’d been angry at him before, but now her smile seemed friendly. Or maybe she was a good actress playing her part as his lover.
“I