The lawyer grinned, and for the first time Sydney saw a flash of steel beneath the pleasant exterior. Dont worry about the overtime. Youre paying through the nose for my services.
Im sure I am, Sydney murmured, suddenly realizing how oddly normal it felt to be talking with another woman, someone who wasnt a guard or cook, or one of Tiberiuss enforcers, or the boss himself. This was possibly the least normal situation shed ever found herself in, yet the act of speaking with Emily felt so normal, it was nearly enough to bring her to tears, driving home how much shed left behind when she left for Rocky Cliff Island, how much more shed lost than shed planned on or even realized.
How much more she might yet lose.
Okay, that was a fun bit of get-to-know-the-players, but we have work to do. Emily pulled a slim laptop computer from her briefcase, set it on the desk and flipped open the flexible screen, turning it so they could both see the display. A few taps on the keyboard woke the machine from hibernation and pulled up a document, this one written in even denser legalese than the contract had been. This is a pretty standard skeleton for a federal immunity deal, along with some language for witness protection, either through WITSEC or protective custody. Based on the particulars of your situation, Im going to suggest that we
The door opened without a warning knock and Sharpe entered the room, filling it as much with his presence as his physical mass.
Sydney frowned, knowing she should be irritated with the interruption, but feeling something else instead, a little lift in the region of her heart, one that warned her she was well on her way to crushing on the agent, despite them being on opposite sides of too many issues.
He mustve had clothes in his car, because hed changed out of the borrowed sweats into a tailored navy suit with a crisp white shirt underneath, and a pair of oxblood shoes that were incongruously rubber soled, as though they were business shoes intended to double for foot pursuitwhich they probably were. That detail, and the glimpse of a shoulder holster beneath his suit jacket, took the look from upscale businessman to something else entirely.
Something that sent a quiver of nervesand heatthrough her core.
Going for bravado, she started to ask if that was it for their privacy, but something in his cool blue eyes stopped her, making her ask instead, Whats wrong?
The local cops just reported in from your house in Maryland. Your sister is missing and her aide and the aides boyfriend are dead.
Celeste missing. The others dead.
The words didnt make any sense.
Sydney sat for a second as her heart beat loud in her ears and her mind refused to process his blunt words. Impossible, she told herself. That sort of thing didnt happen in real life. Didnt happen to people like her and Celeste.
Except it did when she made the mistake of working for a monster like Tiberius, and then compounded the mistake by double-crossing him.
She rose on legs that threatened to buckle beneath her, and took the few steps necessary to bring her face-to-face with Sharpe. Take me there.
Were not finished here, Emily protested, but Sydney waved her off.
Youll have to do the best you can without me. Call me if you have any questions. Ill give you my She broke off, realizing shed canceled her cell phone before she left for the island. She had no phone and no money, and her ID and credit cards were locked up. She was nobody until she retrieved her life from the safe in her bedroom at home.
A home that had been violated. Where two people had been killed.
An image flashed into her mind, that of Jenny Maries body after it had washed up on the beach down-current from Rocky Cliff. The cooks dark hair had been matted with seaweed and sand, and blue crabs had nibbled at her fingers, toes and eyes, but that hadnt been enough to disguise the horrible things Tiberius had done to her before hed killed her and thrown her over the edge.
This, hed been saying to Sydney with his actions. This is what Ill do to you if you cross me. This is what Ill do to the people around you. Like Jenny Marie.
Like Celeste.
Tears filmed Sydneys vision and a sob caught in her throat.
Here. Sharpe handed a business card to the lawyer. My cell number is on it. You can call her at that number. He turned for the door, gesturing for Sydney. Come on. We have a plane to catch.
He acted like he didnt knowor didnt carethat she was upset, like she didnt have the right because shed brought it on herself. A kernel of bitter anger took root in her chest, kindling and spreading through her body.
Hey. She grabbed his arm, trying to ignore the jolt of awareness that sang through her at the feel of hard muscle beneath his suit jacket. But the sensation was so strong, so unexpected, that she fumbled for a second when he turned back and looked at her.
What?
Are you completely insensitive? she wanted to shout. What had happened to the guy on the boat? She wanted that Sharpe back, the one whod held her, comforted her. But she didnt ask those things, because what was the point? It wasnt his job to comfort herit was his job to catch Tiberius, and hed already made it clear that he didnt give a damn about her agenda or her feelings.
And maybe that was for the best, she realized, sucking in a breath. She had a feeling the sizzle shed just felt wasnt one-sided, and that could complicate things. She couldnt become involved with himgetting involved would only serve to derail her from the important things.
Shed learned that lesson all too well before. It was her affair with Dr. Lets-share-ideas-so-I-can-steal-yours Richard Eckhart thatd led to the loss of her university position and gotten her set on this path in the first place.
So instead of asking for comfort, she said, Why arent you arguing about whether or not I should be at the scene?
Sharpe looked down at her hand on his arm, then back up, so he was staring into her eyes when he said, Because I never fight a battle I dont think I can win, Ms. Westlake. You might want to keep that in mind.
A thousand retorts jammed her brain, a thousand reasons why she should back off, back away and sit down with her lawyer while the FBI mobilized its forces to find Celeste. Instead of giving voice to any of that, though, she said simply, Call me Sydney.
Okay. But he didnt offer the same in return. Instead, he gestured to the door and the world beyond, which she hadnt seen in nearly a year. Lets go.
She went.
Twin Targets
Jessica Andersen
www.millsandboon.co.uk
MILLS & BOON
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Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
About the Author
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Epilogue
Copyright
Though shes tried out professions ranging from cleaning sea lion cages to cloning glaucoma genes, from patent law to training horses, Jessica Andersen is happiest when shes combining all these interests with her first love: writing romances. These days shes delighted to be writing full-time on a farm in rural Connecticut that she shares with a small menagerie and a hero named Brian. She hopes youll visit her at www.JessicaAndersen.com for info on upcoming books, contests and to say hi!
Chapter One
Sydney Westlake made her move a half hour before the shift change, when the armed men who guarded the compound on Rocky Cliff Island would be at their least vigilant.
She hoped.
Tiberius was too smart to have a clockwork-regular schedule for something as important as security, so the armed forces that guarded the mansion and surrounding grounds worked randomly staggered shifts. After eleven months on the island, thoughthree of them as a prisonerSydney had found patterns in the randomness.
Today they were on what shed dubbed Schedule C, which meant the guard post located directly between her quarters and the boat dock would change shifts at 1:40 a.m. God willing.
You can do this, she said to herself. You have to do this. For Celeste. Her sisters name had become a mantra, something she held on to when her bravery faltered.
At first Sydney had told herself she was helping her ailing twin by staying on the island off the Massachusetts coast and working for Tiberius. Shed been trying to find a cure for the insidious genetic condition that was slowly killing Celeste. The obscenely large income being funneled into an offshore account was an added draw, allowing Celeste to stay in their wheelchair-friendly, restored Victorian in Maryland with a personal aide, rather than moving to an assisted-living facility of some sort. It had all seemed like a godsend when Tiberius first contacted her through his figurehead company, Tiberius Corp.
Now, though, she knew better. Tiberius wasnt a philanthropist and he wasnt a visionary. He was a monster, a sociopath, a self-professed businessman who wanted to use her discovery to do terrible things. Or rather, sell it to other criminals, who would use it as a smokescreen, hiding their identities while they did God only knew what.
She had to stop it from happening.
Trying not to betray her nerves, she crossed the high-tech lab Tiberius had ordered built and outfitted to her precise specifications. When shed first arrived, the huge room, filled with the latest cutting-edge biotech equipment and analytical devices, had seemed like paradise. Now, it was a prison.
Sitting down at the bank of a half dozen networked computers, each of which controlled several of the big machines and analyzed the resulting data, she tried to block awareness of the security cameras blanketing the huge room, tried not to think about the men who were undoubtedly watching her image on-screen.
Shed done her prep work well. Theyd gotten used to her returning to the lab around 10:00 p.m. and working until one or so in the morning. If she were lucky, all they would see now was their tame lab rat pulling up the last set of results and then powering down the big machines for the night.
In reality, she was executing two programs shed managed to sneak onto the island. One was an uncrackable lockdown program that would freeze all of the lab computers and machines until she typed in a password. The other would shut down all of the networked computers on Rocky Cliff Islandincluding the ones running power and securityfor the space of five minutes, and then go back into hiding, supposedly untraceable by all but the original programmer.
Celeste had developed the routines just before shed gotten sick; she was the techie, Sydney the bio-geek. Together, theyd used to joke, they were a nerd superhero.
Now, those powers would be put to the test.
Okay, kids, do your thing. Sydney powered the lab computer down right after shed fed the programs into the network. In ten minutes, the lights should go out. Then, the next time someone turned on one of the lab computers, the only thing theyd see on the screen would be a text prompt that read: Password?
If she made it off Rocky Cliff Island, she would use the password as leverage to keep her and Celeste alive long enough to grab the money out of her accounts and disappear. Then and only then, she would contact the authorities and tell them about Tiberiuss plans.
If she died trying to escape, she could only hope Tiberius or his tech experts would try three wrong passwords, whereupon the worm would corrupt every piece of data on the network and fry the computers.