Finders Keepers. Shirl Henke
personally while his sister Claudia stood there beaming. It was a college graduation present, for chrissakes!”
“Something else to settle with your aunt when we get back to Boston. She claims it’s a family heirloom and you had no right to take it.”
“This is false arrest. I’ll sue you! Hell, I’ll still sue her!”
“Lots of my retrievals threaten to sue me or have me arrested for kidnapping. Cult members—”
“Samaritan Haven is not a cult,” he said through gritted teeth. “It isn’t even a commune—at least, not the sort you yank brainwashed kids from. It’s really more of a hiding place where people drop out of sight.” Matt leaned forward on the table and combed his fingers through his hair in utter frustration. “I only moved into the place to check out a lead.”
He hesitated. How much should he reveal? He couldn’t endanger his source. That might get her and a number of other innocent people killed. Then again, if Samantha Ballanger had been hired by the Russian Mafia, she already knew that her targets were hiding in the complex. Finding them wouldn’t be difficult. He reconsidered. No, if that were true, he’d already be dead. He decided to take a risk.
“You ever heard of Mikhail Renkov?”
Sam nodded carefully. “The KGB guy who defected to the West in the last days of the Cold War? A big feather in the CIA’s hat, as I recall. Now he’s some sort of import-export millionaire, isn’t he?” Play dumb, Ballanger.
He nodded approvingly. “You read the newspapers. What they haven’t said, yet, is that he hasn’t exactly broken all his ties to Mother Russia. He’s up to his eyeballs in all sorts of illegal stuff—playing footsie with the Russian mob, even dealing with Colombian drug cartels—and I bet he has some pals inside the Company or even in State who’re turning a blind eye.”
“Hang on, Mel,” she interrupted, putting a hand up in dismissal. “Conspiracy Theory was a great movie—”
“And the nutcase Gibson played was right in the end, wasn’t he? Just let me finish. Remember reading about Renkov’s son buying the farm last month?”
“Alexi, the golf pro? Yeah, he was killed in a car bombing. Cops suspect the wife did it—to keep him from divorcing her and running off with his starlet bimbo of the month. Mrs. Renkov dropped out of sight and they’re looking for her.”
“Yeah, the car bomb was her final project to get her electrical engineering degree. Come on, a woman car-bomber? Tess Renkov didn’t kill her husband.”
Sam shrugged. In her checkered career she’d been a cop, paramedic and even moonlighted running down bail jumpers. What he said about the Renkov case could be true. All Pat had told her was that Granger was getting too close to a joint PD-FBI investigation of Mikhail Renkov and they wanted the reporter out of their hair.
“Look, if a bad actor like old Mikhail thought you’d killed his only son, would you stick around and chat?” he argued doggedly. “I think his golden boy was killed by daddy’s enemies. What we have here is a turf war with billions in Eastern Bloc cash at stake.”
“Don’t forget the drug cartels. They have lots of dough, too. But they’re not paying me. Aunt Claudia is. Maybe you can convince her about all this—after I collect my fee.” She shoved the key to the cuffs across the table so he could free his right arm from the chair.
“A one-track mind,” he said with a sigh of resignation. Convincing this dame was as likely as riding a zebra.
Sam watched him unlock the cuff, then took back the key and motioned him to sit on the bed. She knew he was getting tired of taking orders, but he was too sharp to try and jump her—at least just yet. He did as she asked resentfully, then watched as she smoothed out the legal papers he’d crumpled and replaced them in the bag she’d brought from the van.
Stubborn as a stump in hard clay but one fine-looking woman, he thought. Under different circumstances… Forget it, Granger. Remember how that stun gun smarts. Then again, if he could soften her up…so to speak. What the hell, worth a try. It wasn’t as if she was a dog or anything close. In fact, she was a looker. He’d only be doing what came naturally. And so would she, if her earlier reactions to him had meant anything. Usually he read women pretty well.
Sam approached him, holding a set of pajamas she’d taken from the bag. She could almost hear the wheels turning in his mind as she said, “Strip and put these on.”
He cocked his head and grinned, tsking. “With you watching, Ms. Ballanger? You adding voyeurism to bondage?”
“I’m a trained medical professional,” she said coolly. A little bit too coolly. Her indifference to the visions of Matt Granger’s naked body was pure bravado. Sam tightened her grip on the weapon as she tossed the pj’s at him. She was finding that pimply kids spaced out on cosmic visions were a lot easier to handle than one smart-mouthed newsman with a body to die for.
He caught the pajamas deftly, then extended the upper garment back to her. “I’ve always been a bottoms guy myself. Want the top?”
She could feel his eyes on her suddenly hardened nipples as surely as if he had X-ray vision. “No thanks. Never liked The Pajama Game. Just put on both pieces,” she said with satisfaction when readily visible evidence of his reaction started to grow in his jeans.
“Well, what the hell, Ms. Medical Professional, you like ‘The Bondage Game’ well enough. And apparently the Chippendales.”
He gave her another of those infuriating grins and kicked off the slippers, then pulled his shirt over his head…very slowly. She could see every muscle flexing. Tossing it carelessly to the floor between the beds, he started to remove his jeans. She was pleased when he paid careful attention to unzipping his fly. It must have been uncomfortable as hell, she thought smugly, but when he dropped the jeans to his ankles and kicked them away, her mouth was dry. Other places on her body weren’t.
According to her cover story, his attic floorboards were supposed to be warped, but all the timbers below were in great shape. Bloody Architectural Digest quality, dammit! The most interesting one at the moment was the structural beam jutting straight out as he met her eyes and dared her.
“Gonna zap me?” he whispered.
She pointed the stun gun at the strategic place and replied, “If I do, we’ll have a wiener roast, so don’t tempt me.” More like a kielbasa roast. “Just be a good boy and put on the pajamas,” she managed to say with a level voice. He turned around and reached casually for the pj’s, giving her a full view of that great set of buns. Fits with the sausage.
Looking over his shoulder as he slipped the bottoms on, he said, “Didn’t mean to moon you, but I imagine a trained medical professional’s seen it all, hasn’t she?”
“Pretty much.” She managed to leash her libido by reminding herself about the cool ten K plus expenses she’d collect from dear old Aunt Claudia. Right now that road was looking really long, hard and rocky. Don’t think long. Don’t think hard. Don’t think rocks, dammit!
“Good night, Mr. Moonie.” She motioned for him to lie down on the bed.
He stretched out and then folded his hands as if to pray with the open cuff still dangling from his right wrist. “Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray—”
“You’ll have to do your nightly devotions hands unfolded. Reach down and click the cuff to the bed frame.” She pointed at the exposed steel bar beneath the box spring.
“I work much better with both hands free, darlin’,” he said, grinning again as he patted the mattress.
“You’ll only need one hand free to do what you need to do tonight.” Sam couldn’t help the snide tone any more than she could keep her eyes away from the tent pole under the sheet.
Muttering about feminine perversity, he clicked the cuff to the bed frame and closed his eyes. Sam flipped off the lights, undressed and slipped