Deep Breath (5 page)

2:20
P.M.

They stopped for gas on the outskirts of Dallas. Georgia hadn’t eaten a thing all day and was starving. After using the station’s facilities, she trolled the minimart’s aisles and picked up a Coke and a bag of peanuts while Harry pumped gas into the tank of that incredible car.

Harry. What a normal name for someone she had a feeling didn’t have a normal bone in his body. The bones that were there weren’t too shabby, giving him a nice, buff-and-broad, Michelangelo’s David sort of look.

But he was way too calm, way too accepting. He was dealing with a hostage situation as if it were nothing but another day at the office. Whoever he was, Harry van Zandt was no ordinary Joe Blow, ex-military, concerned citizen checking out an auction because he had a jones for an old car.

No way.

She’d seen that dive he’d made across the diner’s counter to get Tracy out of harm’s way. Most guys she’d known would’ve been too busy scrambling to save their own hides to worry about a small-town waitress. And then to slip a steak knife up his sleeve?

Speaking of sleeves, when he’d whipped off his wet T-shirt there at the car to exchange it for the gray athletic number he was wearing now, she’d spent a good thirty seconds oblivious to anything else but his pecs and his abs before snapping out of her lustful stupor.

She forced herself to snap out of it again now. Grabbing a second Coke and another bag of peanuts, she paid the cashier, pulled her sunglasses from the top of her head, and headed for the car.

He was smart, sharp, and on her side. It couldn’t hurt to keep him around. At least for tonight. Hopefully, she wouldn’t need him come tomorrow.

If the dossier actually wound up at the preview, he might be willing to turn a blind eye to whatever means she used to get her hands on it. Maybe she could even get him to provide a distraction. What he didn’t know he couldn’t get arrested for, right?

But this military background of his…She shook her head, tucked his bottle under her elbow, and screwed the top off hers. She knew next to nothing about him. And she definitely needed a few details before presenting him with an illegal proposition.

“I’ve been thinking,” she said, walking up and waiting for him to settle the nozzle in the pump’s holster and tighten the Buick’s gas cap before handing him his peanuts and Coke. At his surprised, “Thanks,” she nodded and went on.

“Do you have dress clothes for tonight?” She glanced at her watch. “There’s a symposium first. We can skip that. The preview reception starts at seven-thirty, but being fashionably late works for me. Less attention. We can slip in while things are in full swing.”

He uncapped the Coke bottle. “Slip in for a hundred and seventy-five dollars, you mean. Since I’m assuming we’ll be going as a couple.”

“Right. A couple.” She pushed away all thoughts of marble David statues and guzzled down a quarter of her drink. It fizzed. It burned. It jerked her mind out of the lust gutter. “I can pony up for the donation, but I’m also going to need to buy clothes. I don’t have anything with me but T-shirts, boots, and jeans.”

“I have a suit, my bag’s in the trunk.” He tore the cellophane top from the peanuts, upended the bag into his mouth, and chewed. “It’ll need to be pressed. And I’m going to need a shower.”

A shower. Makeup, hair, shaving her legs for a dress. All she’d thought about was clothes and shoes. She groaned, glanced again at her watch. “There’s no way we’ll be ready in time.”

Not to mention she still hadn’t come up with a workable plan to walk out of the gallery with the dossier—and without being seen. Or a way to explain to Harry what she had really come to Dallas to do.

The more she thought about it, the more she couldn’t help but wonder if she’d be better off on her own, no matter his familiarity with collateral damage.

Harry twisted the plastic top back onto his bottle and reached for the receipt the pump finally spit out. He headed around to his side of the car. “Sure we will. We need a room for the night, so we’ll do that now. I’ll send my suit to be pressed, we’ll get cleaned up, then go shopping for you.”

Sending his suit to be pressed meant something other than Motel 6, and she was on a limited budget. Making the donation to attend tonight’s preview and buying shoes and a dress would pretty much wipe out the emergency fund stashed in the bottom of her backpack.

“Don’t worry,” he said as if reading her mind, sliding the key into the ignition and turning it to start the car. “The room’s on me. I was headed here anyway, remember? I have a reservation.”

“Oh. Okay,” she said, getting in and shutting her door. Sharing a room with a marble statue wouldn’t be that big of a deal since she had no plans to sleep until she was out of this mess. If she didn’t come away from tonight’s preview with the dossier, she’d need time to figure out her next step.

As Harry pulled the car into traffic, she popped back a mouthful of peanuts and glanced at her watch, wondering if she was going to be sick before or after she swallowed. Her hours were growing short, her cash limited, her acquisition of the dossier hardly guaranteed.

Altogether, her circumstances inspired absolutely no confidence that she’d get Finn out of Charlie Castro’s clutches before it was too late for whatever brutal thing he had planned.

3:00
P.M.

Once housekeeping arrived to pick up his suit, Harry left Georgia to stew and headed for the shower. She hadn’t said much of anything since they’d checked in. She hadn’t said much of anything since he’d gassed up the car, for that matter.

He didn’t think it was the idea of sharing the one room that had her so quiet. More than likely the gravity of the situation was beginning to sink in. For most, it took going through the denial, anger, and bargaining stages before that happened.

She’d only had a few hours to deal, but maybe she’d hit the depression that came before acceptance. He didn’t like seeing her suffer when with a word or two he could have eased her mind.

Problem was, he mused as he stripped down to bare skin, doing so would raise more questions than the revelation would answer. If he even hinted at what he did, she would no doubt demand he call in the cavalry right then and there, take-charge thing that she was.

He couldn’t do that without blowing the mission, and her connections were still his best chance for success. He needed to convince her that he was with her all the way, in for a penny, in for a pound, that he was her best hope for freeing her brother.

But he had to convince her of that as Harry van Zandt, a collector of military memorabilia and classic cars, not as the SG-5 operative who knew a few things about pulling tricks out of hats.

Before he did anything, including shower, he needed to put the diner under surveillance, and do so without involving state or local authorities. Towel around his waist, he lifted the false bottom from his hard-sided shaving kit and retrieved the text messaging unit stored inside.

He lowered the toilet lid and sat, extending the device’s antennae. Elbows braced on his knees, he used his thumbs to type in the password that would connect him to the comm desk at the Smithson Group’s ops center in Manhattan. Ten seconds kicked by before a response flashed on the screen.

> Tripp Shaughnessey at your service.

The man did not have a serious bone in his body, Harry thought, shaking his head.

> Rabbit checking in.

> What can we do you for?

> Two things. Charlie Castro.

> Any relation to Cuba?

> You tell me. Start with antiquities theft.

> Number two?

Harry typed in the GPS coordinates to Waco Phil’s.

> Monitor activity inside and out. No contact.

> No burgers?

Harry chuckled.

> No contact. Including food.

> Will send Simon. That it?

Simon Baptiste was one of the two newest members recruited into SG-5.

> For now. Oh. How’s the chair?

> Slow as hell. Take care, dude.

> Will do.

Tripp Shaughnessey’s never-ending quest to roll his chair the width of Smithson’s cavernous ops center was legendary, and the ribbing he’d earned as a result nonstop.

Harry returned the messaging unit to its storage space, quickly shaved, pushed away thoughts of Tripp and the rest of the SG-5 crew, jumped into the shower, and got back to thinking about Georgia McLain.

She knew he was ex-military. She’d admitted his being so couldn’t hurt but help, or something similar. She couldn’t argue that he had a viable reason to attend the preview and auction. So far, so good.

If she found what she was looking for tonight, he’d have to convince her they would be better served waiting until tomorrow to return. Harry needed to make sure Simon had time to get in place—not only for surveillance and eventually storming the diner, but for the handing off of the goods.

Especially since Harry was convinced that Georgia wasn’t going to want to turn over the dossier to Castro any more than he wanted her to. And this was where things were going to get extra sticky.

Once Finn, Phil, and Tracy were safe, Harry would be taking possession of the dossier whether Georgia liked it or not. Meaning, he needed to figure out exactly what she wanted with it. He was certain it had something to do with her father. He just hadn’t had time to figure out what.

He wasn’t above a compromise or helping her. But he had a job to do. The dossier went back to Manhattan or he went back to the drawing board. That said, he would make sure Georgia and her brother were reunited by the end of the weekend.

He had just stepped from the shower and reached for a towel when a bright white light flashed and nearly blinded him. He reached over and shut off the silent alarm, the trigger to which he’d attached to the room’s door when he’d closed it behind the maid. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Georgia…

He flung the towel around his waist and whipped open the door, stepping barefoot, half-naked, and dripping into the small entry alcove. Georgia stood there with one hand on the door handle as if she were about to leave the room. Her eyes grew wide; her gaze traveled from his head to toe and back.

He didn’t stop to think, but moved in, menacing, hovering, gruff. “Where are you going?”

She shook her head. Her throat convulsed as she swallowed. “Nowhere. It’s housekeeping. With your suit.” She took a step out into the hallway, her other foot braced against the base of the door, and returned with his clothes, which she shoved into his chest. “You owe me five bucks for the tip.”

4:30
P.M.

While Georgia had holed away in the suite’s monstrous bathroom to shower, shave, shampoo, and pull on a clean pair of undies, her T-shirt and jeans, Harry had been busy. Busy doing more than getting dressed and ratcheting up the who-is-this-man-and-where-did-he-come-from stakes.

He wore serious grown-up clothes as beautifully as he wore casual, and as well as Michelangelo’s David wore his marble skin.

She’d walked out of the steamy bathroom and only just stopped herself from demanding what the hell he was doing breaking into her room before she realized her mistake. He was that amazing. And her heart was still dealing with the unexpected lust.

The man was the most beautiful thing she’d seen in forever. Her first impression, made from Finn’s truck when looking down from her window, had been right on the mark. But he was so much more than a girl’s guide to getting off.

His smile—those lips and dimples, the dark shadow of his beard—was enough to melt even the most titanic ice queen. Not that she was one or anything…

Sitting as she was now in the hotel’s salon, having her hair and makeup done, she kept sneaking looks over to where he sat waiting and reading a back issue of
Cosmo
. Every once in a while he’d frown, shake his head, turn the page. If she hadn’t been ordered not to move by her stylist, she might never have stopped laughing.

When Harry told her he’d arranged not only this appointment but another with the hotel boutique’s personal shopper for jewelry, shoes, and a dress, she’d asked him if he thought she was made of money.

He’d pulled out his wallet, handed her a five to pay back the tip, then reminded her she was the one donating to General Duggin’s Scholarship Foundation tonight.

Making sure she arrived looking the part of wealthy collector rather than pack rat was the least he could contribute to the cause—a cause he’d then started to dig into, asking her questions about her family and the importance of the documents Charlie had sent her to find.

Since she’d been stuck on the pack rat comment, frowning as she ransacked her duffel for the sandals she knew that were there, thinking how she really
had
let herself go since being consumed by this quest, she’d almost answered, had barely caught herself in time.

The story of her father’s wrongful incarceration and her determination to prove his innocence had been on the tip of her tongue before she had bit down. If Harry knew the truth of why she wanted the dossier, he would quickly figure out she had no intention of delivering it to Charlie Castro.

Then, no doubt, they’d get into an argument about the value of her brother’s life versus that of her father’s name, and he’d want to know why the hell they were going through all of this if not to save her brother.

She really didn’t want to go there with Harry. She was having too much trouble going there with herself. Finn would understand; she knew he would. As long as he was alive to do so when this was over…

At that thought, she groaned, the sound eliciting the stylist’s concern. “What’s wrong, sweetie? Too much color? Not enough? The highlights are temporary, remember? Three washings max, you’ll be back to being a brunette.”

“Oh, no. I was thinking of something else,” Georgia assured the other woman, meeting her reflected gaze. “I hadn’t even looked…”

But now she did. And she swore the reflection in the mirror couldn’t possibly be hers. “Wow,” was the only thing she could think to say, and so she said it again. “Wow.”

“Yeah. I thought so, too.” The stylist beamed at her handiwork—and rightly so. Georgia had never in her life looked like this. The highlights in her hair gave off a coppery sheen. Her layers, too long and grown out—she was desperate for a new cut—had been trimmed, colored, and swept up into an intricate rooster tail of untamed strands.

And then her face…Was that really her face? The salon’s makeup expert had used a similar color scheme, spreading sheer terra cotta on her cheeks, a blend of copper and bronze on her eyelids, finishing off with a gorgeous cinnamon-colored glaze on her lips.

And all of it matching the beautiful ginger-hued polish on the nails of all twenty fingers and toes. She could go for this girly girl stuff. Really.

Especially when she lifted her gaze to meet Harry’s in the mirror. He stood behind the stylist, his shoulders wide in his designer suit coat, his hands jammed to his lean waist, his smile showing just a hint of teeth.

She had no idea when he’d moved from where he’d been sitting to her chair, but the look in his eyes, the fire in his eyes, and the low sweep of his lashes was enough to make her swoon.

It had been so long since a man had shown
that
kind of interest in her that she didn’t know what to do, how to react, to respond. Except the truth was that it wasn’t the men. It was her.

She had refused to let any man close enough to do more than notice her skill for ferreting out valuable antiques for years now, longer than she could remember.

But now, here came Harry into the middle of her personal catastrophe, a veritable stranger who had the body of a god and a killer smile and eyes that were telling her dangerously sexy things about wanting to get her naked. He was helping her in ways that went above and beyond.

And she still had the night to spend in his room. “Can we charge the makeup to the room? I’ll pay you back.”

“Sure.” His eyes sparkled. His smile grew wicked. “And it’s my treat.”

The stylist swept the cape from around Georgia’s shoulders and Harry offered his hand to help her from the chair. It was a Cinderella moment that she had no business enjoying, but she couldn’t help it.

She hadn’t done a single thing for herself in so long that it was impossible to brush aside this feeling of discovering someone she’d thought lost.

She was well aware of why she and Harry were together, the full extent of what was at stake. But it had been years, literally
years
, since she’d considered herself attractive—not to mention since she’d felt confident that someone of the opposite sex found her so.

Harry did. She didn’t doubt it for a minute. Even if it did up the nerve-wracking factor of the long evening ahead in his company.

While Harry tipped the stylist and settled the bill, she took the bag of cosmetics from the cashier, absently noticing how the attention of every woman in the salon, whether overtly or subtly, was directed toward the checkout station and the fit of Harry’s clothes.

She wanted to laugh; here she was, panicking over sleeping near him when he could crook a finger and have any of these women in his bed.

And then she didn’t want to laugh at all.

She wanted to grab him by the arm and drag him out of there, leaving a battlefield of bloody cat scratches in her wake. Like he belonged to her or something, and how ridiculous was that? He was nothing but a man who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, who was going out of his way to get her out of a jam.

Finn would have done the same for a woman in need. Her ex, hardly. They’d been married, and he wouldn’t have done it for her. Unless there was something in it for him…Hmm. Too bad she hadn’t snapped to that before.

Harry scrawled his signature across the bottom of the ticket, then handed the pen to the cashier. Georgia cocked her head and considered what he could possibly hope to gain from helping her out. He was going to a lot of expense…and sex was the first thing, the only thing, that came to mind.

He turned toward her, that amazing smile reaching all the way to his eyes, and she backed into the corridor that connected the hotel’s lobby with the maze of others leading to meeting rooms, shops, sitting areas, gym lockers, and pricey amenities catering to the well-to-do guest. Like Harry.

“What?” he said, placing his palm in the small of her back and herding her toward the clothing boutique and her appointment there.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked, glancing up as they walked.

He frowned, kept looking forward, looking…edible. “Doing what?”

“Spending all this money to clean me up.” She moved ahead, dislodging his hand and the possessive weight that she was liking way too much.

He caught up and settled it right back where it was, the spread of his fingers heavy and warm. “We’ve been over this already. You’re forking over a hundred and seventy-five bucks to get us into this reception.”

She snorted. “You just dropped more than that on my face and hair.”

“So?” he asked, guiding her around the richly carpeted corridor’s next corner.

“So, in this place, a dress and shoes are going to double your outlay, and we won’t be so even anymore.” When he didn’t respond, she added, “We could make a stop at Foley’s or J.C. Penney and save a bundle.”

This time he shook his head. “We’re out of time.”

“I just hope you’re not out of money.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because if things don’t go well tonight, I’ll need another dress for Sunday’s auction.”

He laughed, a chuckle that was low and deep and vibrated all the way to his palm where he touched her. “You’re forgetting something.”

She wasn’t surprised. She could barely even think. She was surprised she hadn’t tripped over one of her own two feet. “What?”

“I’m bidding on a 1948 Jaguar.”

“Oh.” That shut her up. What? A good ninety thousand or so? Expensive hobby.

“And I’ve been thinking that if I draw the attention as the one interested in the auction, you can do your thing without anyone getting in your way.”

It sounded good anyway. At least until they reached the boutique and she saw the dresses and shoes the personal shopper had selected in advance
and
in her sizes—Georgia wasn’t sure how she felt about Harry snooping through her things—based on the event details he’d given when he’d called.

She glanced from the dresses hanging on the rolling rack to Harry. “These dresses are not going to do a damn thing to help you draw attention away from me.”

“Maybe not. But you’ll make for good arm candy.”