Seducing the Mercenary

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The tech stepped onto the balcony. “Her ID checks out.”

“What about her equipment?”

“It’s beyond my scope, I’m afraid. Her satellite phone and computer are fitted with highly sophisticated GPS and encryption technology,” he said. “We’re going to need Ndinga if you want to try to decode it.”

“Is the technology consistent with a science mission of this nature?”

The tech’s mouth twisted. “It looks more state-of-the-military to me.” He paused. “It’s her laptop that worries me. It appears to be communicating at a low-level-signal strength with another off-site station, even when turned off.”

“GPS?”

“No, this is something different.” He hesitated. “I haven’t seen anything like this before. We’d learn more by opening the hard drive up in a forensic environment, but again, we’ll need Ndinga and his team for that.”

Laroque’s pulse quickened. “What about her computer files?”

“Encrypted, but she does have a photo in there that I could access.”

“Photo?”

“From the Parisian Press archives. The caption says it’s you at age thirteen being taken from the hospital by your father.”

A band of muscle tightened sharply across Laroque’s chest.

His mind was yanked instantly back to a day he’d rather forget. His mother had been famous. She was always in the tabloids, and by default, so was he, the young boy hanging on to the skirts of the glamorous African model, or so it had looked to the world. It was logical Dr. Emma Sanford would have dug one or two of those out, especially if she wanted to work on a book. Yet it made him feel strange. Vulnerable. Especially that specific image.

Did she know it represented the turning point of his life?

“Anything in her e-mail?” he asked, his words unnecessarily clipped.

“Only correspondence with Geographic International headquarters.”

“Thank you. Keep her equipment for Ndinga’s return,” Laroque said, dismissing his tech.

He turned to watch the peach sky deepen to burnt orange, then blood-red as the fiery ball of sun crashed over the Purple Mountains in a wild symphony of color. He breathed in deep. He loved the African sky. It was bold. Confrontational. Always changing.

It defined him.

He hadn’t been born here, yet this place pulsed rich through his blood. His mother was an Ubasi native, his father a third-generation South African of Dutch heritage. Laroque himself had been born and schooled in Paris, but from the age of thirteen this continent had been his heart and soul.

People from other parts of the world didn’t understand the differences, the laws of this vast and elemental land. They couldn’t. The things that happened here just weren’t in the lexicon of the West.

It made him mad…and, strangely, glad. He was as conflicted about this place as it was conflicted itself.

But he did know that if Ubasi and the rest of the Niger Delta was to survive, thrive even, he needed to bridge that vast gap between Western ideology and African. The rebel oil alliance was the starting point, the foundation of something big, a local OPEC and an army with some real negotiating power for the people of the Delta.

He wondered just what part in this unfolding melodrama Emma Sanford was to play, if any. There was a chance she was telling him the truth, but things weren’t adding up well enough to make Laroque comfortable.

Her computer equipment had only raised more questions.

If she was broadcasting he wanted to know to whom—and why. He needed to hang on to her gear long enough for Mano Ndinga, his top IT genius, to return and look into it.

Laroque checked his watch.

Mano and his team were busy installing a network at the Nigerian base of one of Laroque’s allied rebel militias. They’d be back in roughly four days. Laroque couldn’t hold Dr. Emma Sanford prisoner until then. It would cause an international outcry.

He could just ship her out of the country. However, if she was some kind of informant, she might be a vital link to whatever was going on behind the scenes in Ubasi. He’d be a fool not to milk that angle—it was the only lead he had. And if worse came to worst, she might end up a valuable negotiating tool.

She’d have to stay on her own volition.

He’d have to make it her choice.

He drew the morning air deep into his lungs again, and breathed out slowly. If the lady was playing a game of deception, she was good. But he’d show her that he was better.

And keeping one’s enemies close—very close—was never a bad idea.

8:07 Zulu. Saturday, November 9. Ubasi Palace

A loud rapping on the door ripped Emily from sleep. She jolted upright, squinting as she tried to focus. Bright bars of sunlight streamed through shutters, throwing slatted patterns on the walls. Her head felt fuzzy, her mouth dry.

The banging continued, louder.

She stumbled out of bed and headed toward the door, belting the silk robe she’d found behind the bathroom door tightly around her waist as she went. She pulled on the brass handle, and it gave—the door had been unlocked from the outside. She drew it open cautiously, shoving her tangle of hair back from her face as she did.

Muscled pecs under a snug-fitting crisp T-shirt greeted her at eye level. She stared numbly, her brain trying to kick back into gear. She lifted her eyes slowly and met his clear, penetrating gaze. Her stomach somersaulted, and she grounded herself by reaching for the door handle, his eyes instantly tracking her movement. Did this guy not miss a damned thing?

“Good morning,” Laroque said in his exotic African-French accent, a smile reaching right into his luminous green eyes, making them sparkle with unspeakable mischief.

The effect rocketed through Emily like dynamite. And damned if her cheeks didn’t flush. She reached up to smooth down her hair.

“You slept well?”

“I…yes. Thank you.” It sounded trite. She’d been abducted and locked in a turret, for goodness’ sake. “I was tired. I was dragged here at 2:00 a.m.,” she added defensively. “What…time is it, anyway?”

He held up her passport. “Time to leave Ubasi.”

She stared at her passport in his hand, her ticket to freedom.

She reached up to take it from him, but as she tugged at the passport, he held tighter, his fingers connecting with hers, the sensation electric. Emily’s breath caught and her eyes whipped to his face.

“I have a proposition,” he said. “Take the passport, and leave Ubasi before noon. Or—” He paused, watching her way too intently for comfort. “I keep the passport, and you stay and interview me. Your choice. My terms.”

Her heart was now racing so fast she could barely breathe. “Your…terms?” Her voice came out thick.

“Stay in my palace, under my constant guard. If we do venture beyond the fortress, you do not leave my side. Understand? Not for one instant. No exceptions. It’s for your own protection, of course.”

Emily appeared to be incapable of disconnecting from his touch, of letting go of her passport, her ticket to freedom. Her mind reeled. She should leave, for her own good. Perhaps she wasn’t yet mentally ready to handle this man and the strange seductive power he had over her.

Then she recalled the mission, why she needed to succeed. She thought of New York, of her ex, of the utter humiliation and pain that awaited her.

She’d be Laroque’s voluntary captive. She’d have exclusive access to Le Diable in his inner sanctum, an extremely rare opportunity to watch one of her Alpha Dog subjects at work. She’d have access to information that could help the FDS.

This was an opportunity that might never present itself again.

This was what she wanted—wasn’t it?

A dark, sensual excitement tangled with rising adrenaline as conflict raged through Emily. He was making it her decision. He was making her a partner in her own captivity. It was a power play.

Laroque could destroy her if she stayed. He would kill her if he found out who she was working for.

This is life and death, Emily. This is the real thing. Wake up, here, think straight.

Logic screamed at her to leave, screamed that she was basing decisions on flawed reasoning, on personal issues, not professional ones. Logic told her that at some level she was dangerously attracted to this subject, and it reminded her of all the trouble she’d ever gotten herself into when she’d tangled emotionally with A-types. And those men in her past didn’t even begin to hold a candle to the kind of power and sexual charisma Laroque possessed.

Neither were they killers.