To Love a Thief

“I think I should go with you.”

He shook his head. “I work alone. I always have. Besides, you’re not trained for field operations.”

“Tell that to the guy at the morgue.”

The swift comeback earned her a hard look. Mackenzie took it without a blink. Roles and missions had become something of a sore point between her and Nick since that operation in San Antonio some months back. She really couldn’t understand why he still got steamed over the fact that she’d snuggled up to the country club type who’d hired a hit man to kidnap and kill his wife. Helping take the sleazy contractor down had provided Mackenzie intense satisfaction. It was hard to accept being relegated to mere staff work again.

Which was where Nick seemed determined to keep her.

Rising with the fluid, pantherlike grace that characterized him, he rounded the desk. Mackenzie found herself trapped between a solid block of mahogany and one hundred eighty-plus pounds of lean muscle encased in a hand-tailored Brioni suit.

“One of the first rules of survival in the field is to avoid unnecessary distractions. And you, Comm, are in serious danger of becoming a distraction.”

Mackenzie waffled between feeling flattered and insulted for all of two seconds before deciding on insulted. She’d experienced plenty of sexism in the navy, some unintentional, some not. She hadn’t put up with it then. She wasn’t about to now. In her characteristic way, she laid the matter right on the line.

“If you’re referring to how close we came to a lip-lock the other night, we both know it wouldn’t have happened. Neither one of us is the type to indulge in an office affair.”

He cocked his head, measuring her through a screen of ridiculously sexy gold-tipped lashes. “You’re sure about that?”

“Yes.” She looked him square in the eye. “I’m sure. You’re a professional, Nick. You take your work very seriously. So do I. I could send one of my technicians over to work communications for you, but I prefer to go myself. Like you, I’ve got a score to settle with whoever hired those bastards. And we both know I’m the best in the business when it comes to comm.”

She was. Nick couldn’t argue that. In all his years with OMEGA, he’d never encountered anyone with anything close to this woman’s uncanny ability. She could coax a signal from a dead satellite or milk data from supposedly secure, protected sources. He’d also spent enough years in the field to know how vital good comm was. You never knew when you might need an alternate escape route or an emergency on-scene extraction.

But his gut still kinked whenever he remembered how close Mackenzie had come to taking a bullet the other night. Everything in him shied away from the idea of putting her in the line of fire again.

For the first time since taking over as OMEGA’s acting director he understood how Adam Ridgeway must have felt whenever Maggie went into the field. Sending men and women you considered your friends into harm’s way was gut-clenching enough. Sending the stubborn, irritating female who’d somehow managed to get under his skin was infinitely worse.

The only plus that Nick could see to taking her to Nice with him was that he could keep an eye on her. They were both operating under the assumption that he was the target, but, as Mackenzie had pointed out, they hadn’t nailed that down yet. They wouldn’t until he worked out this French connection. Nick couldn’t discount the possibility that she’d been the intended victim, that someone who knew her connection to OMEGA wanted to eliminate her. Or, as she’d suggested, maybe the attack stemmed from her days in the navy.

“All right. I’ll have Mrs. Wells reserve two seats on the Concorde, with connecting flights to Nice. We can leave early tomorrow morning and be there in time for dinner. In the meantime…”

His glance roamed her neat white blouse and slim skirt. They represented a significant departure from her usual jeans but wouldn’t hack it at one of the most exclusive resorts on the Côte d’Azur.

“Get the Field Dress unit to fix you up with a wardrobe. You’d better take several gowns, a couple of cocktail dresses, a selection of resort day-wear. And bikinis. You’ll only need the bottoms, of course.”

“Of course.”

Mackenzie didn’t bat an eye. She knew from her Mediterranean cruise that everyone went topless on European beaches except prudish, self-conscious American tourists. No way she was going to admit she’d fallen smack into the prude category.

“We’ll stay at the Negresco,” Nick told her. “The owner has put out tentative feelers about the possibility of opening a Nick’s at the hotel. That will give me the perfect cover for a visit.”

“What about my cover?”

He made a show of shooting his snowy cuffs and Mackenzie guessed immediately what was coming. The man had a tabloid reputation to live up to, after all.

“The best cover is always the simplest. When asked, we’ll merely introduce you as my companion.”

“Define companion.”

“Friend. Mistress. Lover.”

“I don’t think so,” Mackenzie drawled. “Let’s go with business associate.”

For the first time since the attack, real amusement flickered in Nick’s eyes. “Do you really think the French will make any distinction between the two?”

“The French might not, but we will.”

With that firm pronouncement, Mackenzie left his office and plunged into her own preparations for the mission. Her first stop was the control center, where she had the communications tech on duty call in the rest of her crew. While waiting for them to arrive, she zapped out a few queries and began compiling a complete social, economic and geopolitical history of the French Riviera in general and the city of Nice in particular.

That done, she zipped down to the basement and consulted the magicians in Field Dress Unit. Field Dress had more experience outfitting OMEGA’s agents with Kevlar body armor, jungle fatigues and the latest in Arctic survival gear than designer originals. But as soon as Mackenzie explained her needs, the frizzy-haired genius who headed the unit sent his team to scour Washington’s most elite boutiques.

Within hours they’d decked Mackenzie out in sinfully decadent silk lingerie, the latest fall lines from Versace and Armani, shoes by Ferragamo, and handbags from Prada and Chanel. As Nick’s “associate,” she had to exude at least a degree of the same wealth and sophistication he did.

If an entire new wardrobe wasn’t enough to make her feel like Sandra Bullock in Miss Congeniality II, the haughty, self-important genius Field Dress brought in to tame her shoulder-length mane would have done the trick. As Mackenzie explained to the stylist, she usually just twisted the mink-brown mass at the back of her head, anchored it with a plastic clip, and went about her business.

“Obviously,” the artist sniffed.

When finally released from Field Dress, a gelled, manicured and pedicured Mackenzie escaped to control center. Her communications technicians greeted her with a barrage of grins and wolf whistles.

“Whoooo-weee!” the oldest of the group exclaimed. “That’s some new look, boss.”

Mackenzie tossed her head, flipping a glossy swirl over one shoulder, and returned John’s grin.

“Like it?”

“What’s not to like?”

She’d worked with the happily married father of four long enough now to accept the compliment as intended.

“You may change your mind when you realize we have to stuff a suitcase load of electronics into this little number,” she told him, dangling her Prada handbag by its strap.

Her group of experts instantly focused on the envelope-size bag. There was nothing they loved more than a challenge like this one.

“Good thing we’ve acquired those new, miniaturized circuit boards,” John murmured. “What are you thinking you’ll need, chief?”

Mackenzie had worked the list in her mind while Field Dress attacked her body. She had no idea what she and Lightning might run into in France, but she intended to be prepared for just about anything.

“I want secure satellite voice transmitters for both me and Lightning, NAVSAT directional finders, biochemical sensors, a sound amplifier that will let me listen to conversations up to fifty meters away and the sharpest high-resolution surveillance cameras in our inventory. Plus the new Taser we’ve been testing.”

John gave another whistle. The Taser was the latest CIA version of a stun gun. No larger than an ordinary ballpoint pen, it packed a powerful punch. A quarter-second contact caused instantaneous muscle contraction. One to two seconds short-circuited an attacker’s neuro-centers and brought him down. Three would leave him staring at the ceiling in a daze.

Given that an agent’s life could well depend on the equipment he or she took into the field, Mackenzie and her people thoroughly tested every de vice they added to their electronic grab bag. She and John had both endured only a half-second zap. That was more than enough to convince both of them of the effectiveness of this particular device.

“Hope you don’t have to use that baby in an operational mode,” John commented, remembering how he’d snarled like a bear with a sore paw for days after the test.

“Not to worry,” Mackenzie returned with a shrug. “I’ll save it for the bad guys.”

Chapter 4