Ace Is Wild (6 page)

Almost before she finished, the pilot started his descent into a park not far from the Fairmont—still within Boston city limits.

Vivi was clearly puzzled.

“Mother likes to arrive at these events in a manner befitting her station,” Alex explained.

Cassandra waved that off with a perfectly manicured hand and a supercilious expression. “I simply prefer not to wait in traffic.”

The helicopter set down. Alex climbed out and the driver of a waiting limo helped Cassandra to the ground. Vivi tried to slip out immediately after the other two women. Daniel took her by the arm and pulled her back in, holding on while the limo driver shut the door.

“Sorry you gave that cop his gun back?” Daniel asked, seeing the look in her eyes.

“I’ve done what I wanted to do. I’ll go and—”

“Get arrested.”

The pilot broke in over the headphones, asking where they wanted to go. “The FBI building in D.C.,” Daniel said. “Call Mike Kovaleski, tell him Daniel Pierce is on the way in. He’ll okay it.”

A flare of panic crossed Vivi’s face before she hid it.

Daniel almost felt sorry for her. Almost. “It’s either the Boston P.D. or the feds.”

“Or you could let me go, seeing as I saved your life.”

“You pulled a gun on a U.S. attorney, not to mention the Boston cop and the wife of a very influential man. The locals aren’t going to care that there were two hit men after me. The feds are your get-out-of-jail-free card.”

“Why would you want to help me?”

Daniel sat back and looked out the window. “I’m asking myself that same question.”

“VIVIENNE FOSTER, AKA VIVIENNE TOTCHKA, AKA Madame Totchka. Oh, sorry, that’s the grandmother’s alias. Not that it makes a difference.” Mike Kovaleski pushed back from the computer, not his favorite tool no matter how much data it spit out, or how fast. He missed the days when information didn’t travel at the speed of light, the bad guys didn’t commit crimes without ever leaving their newly— and loosely—democratic countries, and the geeks weren’t running the world. “No known groups or affiliations.”

“How about cults?”

“None of those either,” Mike said. “But I don’t trust her.”

“Of course not,” Daniel said, “she’s Russian.”

“They’re just lulling us into a false sense of security,” Mike maintained. “Soon as we let down our guard,
bam
.”

“Back to communism?”

“I’m just saying.”

“Right, not letting my guard down.”

“Wise-ass. That’s what happens when you go to law school instead of sticking it out here.”

“Not exactly my choice,” Daniel reminded him.

“Yeah, dumb fucks upstairs with their medical reports and insurance advisors. Probably don’t have a dick between them, and if they did they couldn’t find it with a flashlight and a book on anatomy.”

Daniel grinned, flipping the chair in front of Mike’s desk to one side so he could get off his bad leg and keep Vivi in sight while Mike kept muttering things like “putting people out to pasture,” and “pencil-neck college boys with manuals for brains.”

They were in Mike’s glass-fronted office, in the FBI building, surrounded by agents and researchers and the people who cleaned the floors, which was mostly who was there at that time of night. But still, it was a pretty safe place to be when somebody was trying to kill you. If you hadn’t brought one of the lunatics along.

His eyes were drawn back to the lunatic in question, but he wasn’t feeling threatened. There was still that little spike of lust when he looked at her, but mostly what he felt was relief. She’d gotten him out of an uncomfortable situation, after all, being auctioned off like a side of beef. And okay, the way she’d gone about it left something to be desired, but damn, he thought, looking around, it was good to be back, even under these circumstances. Hell, who was he kidding, especially under these circumstances. Nothing like a halfway decent death threat to make his day.

“I don’t think she’s dangerous,” he said, his eyes still on Vivi. She turned around and looked at him, like she’d done every time he’d thought of her.

“Apparently she leaves a hell of an impression, though.”

Daniel wiped the smile off his face and gave Mike his full attention.

“She’s been in some trouble,” Mike continued, squinting at his computer screen long enough to refresh his memory. “One arrest, charges dropped.”

“Fraud?”

“Yeah. Not one of your more violent crimes. I think you’re right about her potential threat level.”

“She didn’t hold you at gunpoint.”

“You telling me you were afraid of that little slip of a thing? With that face? And that body?”

“Want to check for a staple in her navel?”

“Not Hugh Hefner,” Mike pointed out unnecessarily, then ran down the non-Playboy Bunny facts they knew about her, which wasn’t much. “She knows how to use a gun, and she claims to be a mind reader, which we both know is a load of hooey.”

Daniel nodded, thinking hooey was a pretty good way to put it. But . . . “She knew there was a hit out on me.”

“Yeah.” Mike managed to convey a lot with that one word. But then Mike had been his handler, and Daniel figured they’d worked together long enough to both be asking the same questions and drawing the same conclusions.

Like once they ruled out clairvoyance, ESP, gut feeling, and guesswork, the only thing left was direct knowledge. But from whom? How involved was she, and why warn him?

“Ran a check after you called me from the helicopter,” Mike said. “Nothing on the taps, nothing in the air, no rumors. Far’s I know you’re completely off the radar of anyone who’d want you dead. Or at least they’re not talking about it. ’Cept to her.”

“She put her own life on the line,” Daniel felt a need to remind them both.

“True enough,” Mike said, “so what’s in it for her?”

“Maybe she was just doing a good deed.”

“Fraud with a heart of gold?” Mike snorted. “I don’t buy that psychic crap, and neither do you. The only way she could’ve known there was a contract out on you is if she heard it firsthand from the author or the contractor.”

Mike was right, Daniel knew it, but it didn’t sit well. Vivi Foster didn’t seem like the sort of woman who’d be mixed up in the kind of criminal activity that would involve killing a federal prosecutor. Then again, she didn’t look like someone who’d bilk innocent people out of their hard-earned money—even when they asked for it. But she’d copped to that much.

“Any way you look at it,” Mike said, “she’s dirty.”

Daniel couldn’t have agreed more, but his version of dirty had nothing to do with rap sheets or criminal activity. His version of dirty would have broken decency laws in about thirty states and gotten them both arrested. Without realizing he’d turned, his eyes met hers and there was heat there, and knowledge. And a challenge.
Bring it on, Ace,
she was saying,
but don’t expect an easy victory
.

Something flared inside him, something he hadn’t felt in a long time. Lust, he decided, for her, for the chase. Especially for the chase. If she understood anything about him, she’d know a good pursuit would be more of an aphrodisiac to him than anything else in the world . . .

Of course, he thought, however she’d discovered it, she knew that about him. And she was using it. “She can’t be trusted,” he said, “but that doesn’t give us cause to hold her.”

“The gun gives us cause.”

“There’s more to be gained from letting her go. Call off the Boston P.D.”

Mike blew out a breath, scrubbing his hands back through his marine-cut hair. “I’ll take care of it. All of it.”

VIVI SAT OUTSIDE OF MIKE SOMEBODY-SKI’S OFFICE, thoughts muddled, nerves jumping, hopped up on adrenaline and having a hard time working past any of it long enough to get some halfway decent impressions. Except the ones that came through her physical senses.

Daniel and the fed were in a closed room and far enough away to keep her from hearing much of anything, so her ears were no use. That just left her eyes, which was a problem. Not because her chair was situated to put her back to the windows. But because every so often she’d glanced over her shoulder, and each time her eyes had met Daniel’s. That was where the trouble started.

She ought to be seizing the chance to get a read on him. But there was the physical jolt to get past first, that instant buzz of attraction she couldn’t prevent no matter how she braced herself. Before she knew it, she’d be thinking about how amazing he looked in a tuxedo—or rather half out of it.

His jacket hung open, and he had a really, really good body. Muscular. Everywhere. She liked that he’d lost the tie and undone the top couple of shirt buttons. She liked that he had chest hair, not so much that she had an urge to ask him if he hibernated in the winter, but enough to make her wonder how it would feel under her palms. She liked his five-o’clock shadow; she liked the way his limp gave him just enough vulnerability; she even liked the way he looked at her like she was crazy.

She loved the way his hands felt on her.

She could still feel the slide of his fingers, the heat of his palms burning her alive even through the thin, maddening cloth of her T-shirt, almost as hot as his eyes when they went all intense, as if she were the only other person in the world. If he so much as kissed her with that kind of focus, she’d never be the same again, and if they made love . . .

But they wouldn’t be making love, or kissing, or even touching again, for that matter. They weren’t going to see each other after tonight if Daniel had his way. That much was clear from the way he was watching her. It wasn’t particularly pleasant, or reassuring, even though she tried to remind herself that at least he had a sense of humor.

The other guy was another story. The other guy was a humor black hole. He was watching her, too, except he looked like he was posing for Mount Rushmore. She turned back around, and though she knew there was no way he was still staring at the back of her head, physically it felt like he’d reached out, curled a hand around the nape of her neck, and was squeezing. It didn’t take a psychic to know why.

For starters they’d gotten her name out of her. Not that she’d fought very hard to keep it a secret, and even though she’d given them the legal one, Vivienne Foster, she knew they’d find the business alias she used. That being the case, they’d have read her police record. Even that didn’t bother her; the worst of her past wasn’t in there anyway.

What bothered her was the certainty that Daniel and his FBI straight man were using her history as an excuse to treat her like the enemy. Not that it surprised her.

She looked over her shoulder, met Daniel’s eyes, and felt like she’d caught fire. She didn’t know how he’d gotten from suspicion to sex but there was no question what was on his mind, and now that she’d tuned into it, she had no choice but to let it run its course. It didn’t take long. Daniel went from lust back to mistrust with a speed that made Vivi envy his self-control, especially as she couldn’t match it. She spent a little more time battling back her libido. The most she could manage was a slow simmer, and she got there none too soon.

The door beside her opened, and she shot out of the chair, whipping around to find Daniel, looking grim, just closing the door behind himself. The other guy was still sitting behind his desk, doing his imitation of granite.

Daniel wrapped his hand around her elbow and escorted her away from Mike’s office.

“Where are we going?”

“Just follow me and keep quiet—and you might want to be grateful the FBI isn’t arresting you.”

“Why aren’t they?” she asked because she figured he’d expect it.

“Let’s just say warning me about the hit men balanced out the rest of it.”

And they planned to have her followed, hoping to find out how she’d known about the attempt. “Doubters,” she muttered.

“Still sticking to your mind-reading con?” he asked, stopping at the first bank of elevators they came across.

“Are you so sure it’s a con?”

“The people who sued you thought it was.”

She followed him onto the elevator, watched him punch the button for the ground floor. “The people who sued me heard things they didn’t like.”