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Rafe Sinclair's Revenge
Gayle Wilson
HE WOULD NEVER FORGET…The destruction of the U.S. embassy in Amsterdam had left ex-CIA operative Rafe Sinclair with flashbacks of the unspeakable horrors he'd witnessed that night, and forced him to abandon the job he'd dedicated his life to. His only consolation had been that the terrorist behind the attack was dead–killed by Rafe's own hand.Now, six years later, someone was trying to convince Rafe that the terrorist was alive. And that someone was targeting the one person who could draw Rafe Sinclair back into the game–Elizabeth Richards. Elizabeth and Rafe had once been partners and lovers, and he would give up everything to keep her safe–everything. And it looked as though, this time, that was exactly what it was going to take!
Someone had been here
And judging by the open decanter, she knew who. Maybe she had changed everything else, but Elizabeth still kept the best whiskey in the Waterford.
“What the hell are you doing here, Rafe?” she asked, not raising her voice. Wherever he was, he would have been watching her since she’d entered the kitchen.
“You’ve cut your hair.”
He always noticed things like that. Maybe too much. Still, the fact that he had noticed caused an unwanted thickness in her throat.
From force of habit, her hand rose to rake the chin-length hair that had once been long enough to tangle around his bare, sweating shoulders as they made love.
At the memory, a jolt of sexual heat seared along nerve pathways that had seemed atrophied. They weren’t. Painfully, unexpectedly, she knew that now.
Steeling herself, she walked into the living room. After five years, she was in the same room with Rafe Sinclair. Something she had thought would never happen again.
Dear Harlequin Intrigue Reader,
We’ve got what you need to start the holiday season with a bang. Starting things off is RITA
Award-winning author Gayle Wilson. Gayle returns to Harlequin Intrigue with a spin-off of her hugely popular MEN OF MYSTERY series. Same sexy heroes, same drama and danger…but with a new name! Look for Rafe Sinclair’s Revenge under the PHOENIX BROTHERHOOD banner.
You can return to the royal kingdom of Vashmira in Royal Ransom by Susan Kearney, which is the second book in her trilogy THE CROWN AFFAIR. This time an American goes undercover to protect the princess. But will his heart be exposed in the process?
B.J. Daniels takes you to Montana to encounter one very tough lady who’s about to meet her match in a mate. Only thing…can he avoid the deadly fate of her previous beaux? Find out in Premeditated Marriage.
Winding up the complete package, we have a dramatic story about a widow and her child who become targets of a killer, and only the top cop can keep them out of harm’s way. Linda O. Johnston pens an emotionally charged story of crime and compassion in Tommy’s Mom.
Make sure you pick up all four, and please let us know what you think of our brand of breathtaking romantic suspense.
Enjoy!
Sincerely,
Denise O’Sullivan
Associate Senior Editor
Harlequin Intrigue
Rafe Sinclair’s Revenge
Gayle Wilson
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Five-time RITA
finalist and RITA
Award winner Gayle Wilson has written twenty-seven novels and two novellas for Harlequin/Silhouette. A former high school English and world history teacher of gifted students, she has won more than forty awards and nominations for her work. Recent recognitions include a 2002 Daphne du Maurier Award for Romantic Suspense.
Gayle still lives in Alabama, where she was born, with her husband of thirty-three years and an ever-growing menagerie of beloved pets. She has one son, who is also a teacher of gifted students. Gayle loves to hear from readers. Write to her at P.O. Box 3277, Hueytown, AL 35023. Visit Gayle online at http://suspense.net/gayle-wilson.
FOR YOUR EYES ONLY
CIA
AGENT PROFILE
SPECIAL SKILLS: Trained in counterterrorism and in interrogation methods; hand-to-hand combat expert; top-notch marksman; speaks fluent Arabic
AGENT EVALUATION: Recipient of the agency's highest citation for valor above and beyond the call of duty.
FOR YOUR EYES ONLY
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Rafe Sinclair—Five years ago this ex-CIA operative hunted down and executed a terrorist responsible for the deaths of hundreds of innocent people. Now the agency is telling Rafe that Gunther Jorgensen not only isn’t dead, he’s bent on revenge. The problem is Rafe may not be his target.
Elizabeth Richards—Once a member of Griff Cabot’s elite antiterrorism team, Elizabeth has a new identity and an ordinary life, one that is about to be disrupted by a couple of ghosts from her past. One of them is hunting her. The other, former partner and lover Rafe Sinclair, is determined to become her protector.
Gunther Jorgensen—Is the terrorist mastermind alive or dead? And if it’s not Jorgensen who is stalking Elizabeth, then who is it?
Griff Cabot—What secret knowledge does Griff possess that makes him agree to let Rafe set out alone on a suicide mission?
John Edmonds—Was Edmonds really sent by Cabot or does The Phoenix operative have his own agenda?
Lucas Hawkins—The legendary assassin of the External Security Team may hold the answer to questions about Rafe that Elizabeth has puzzled over for more than six years.
To BJ
who makes me incredibly envious of her talent.
Contents
Prologue
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
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Epilogue
Author Note
Prologue
The man Griff Cabot had come to find was carefully turning a piece of wood on a spindle sander. Dark, long-fingered hands handled the object with a skill that was nearly graceful, despite the strength and masculinity that was apparent in their every movement.
The workshop where he was working had been attached to the back of a small log cabin, which sat in a clearing on the side of Sinclair Mountain. When no one had answered his repeated knocks on the front door, Cabot had been drawn around to the back by a sound he hadn’t then been able to identify. Now he could.
When he lifted his gaze from the workman’s hands, he realized with a sense of shock that the passage of six years had had as little effect on the face of the man he was watching as on those hands. The striking blue eyes were hidden, intent on whatever he was shaping, but the austere, almost forbidding features were exactly as he had remembered them.
“You should never sneak up on a man who’s holding a gun,” Rafe Sinclair said without glancing up. “I would think you, of all people, would know that.”
“Out of practice, I guess,” Griff acknowledged, his mouth relaxing into a smile. “Besides, I didn’t realize that was a gun.”
“This is only the butt. But when it’s finished…”
With a tilt of his head, Sinclair indicated the rosewood box that lay open at the end of his workbench. He still hadn’t made eye contact with his visitor.
Cabot understood that was deliberate. As deliberate as had been his unannounced arrival. If he had told Rafe Sinclair he was coming, he would have found the North Carolina mountainside deserted.
Griff stepped into the shop, crossing over to the rosewood case to which he’d been directed. The inside was lined with black velvet, still rich if faded with age. Nested against that darkness was a single dueling pistol, incredibly beautiful and yet also obviously, almost obscenely, deadly.
Despite the indention in the lining where a matching pistol should rest, there was only the one. Cabot raised his eyes, examining with renewed interest the object Sinclair was now holding up to the light.
“You’re repairing the mate to this?” Griff asked.
“I’m recreating the mate.”
Cabot looked down again on the weapon in the box. The curved wood of its handle was the same glowing rosewood as the case. Its sides were covered with intricately chased silver, the soft gleam of that precious metal outshining the baser metal of the long barrel.
“You can do that?” he asked. “Duplicate this one?”
“Of course,” Sinclair said, looking directly at him for the first time.
The crystalline-blue eyes hadn’t changed either, Griff realized. And for some strange reason he found that comforting.
“The only difference between them,” Rafe went on, “is that this one will be accurate. If you’d ever fired the one you’re looking at, you’d wonder why they bothered with duels. If you needed to be sure of killing your opponent, you’d have been better off beating him to death with it.”
Griff laughed, his own knowledge of the notorious inaccuracy of early nineteenth-century firearms affirming the truth of what Sinclair had said. Just as his knowledge of the man who was in the process of reproducing a two-hundred-year-old pistol confirmed that he would do exactly what he had claimed.
Rafe Sinclair would build a weapon that would be perfect in every detail, identical to its mate, except for its increased accuracy. That demanding perfectionism, inherent in every task he undertook, had always been this man’s gift. Ultimately, it had also been his curse.
“Where did you get them?” Griff asked, in no hurry to broach the subject that had brought him here.
“They belonged to an ancestor of mine. Sebastian Sinclair, who supposedly dropped the missing pistol of that pair into the Thames while he was rescuing his Spanish-born wife.”
Griff wondered if that might be where his friend had acquired his Christian name. The source of that “Rafael,” always spoken with a true Iberian accent, had always seemed as enigmatic as the man himself.
“Bloody careless of him, if you ask me,” Sinclair said, his deep voice lightened with a sudden amusement, “but I don’t suppose they were nearly as valuable then as they would be now.”
“English,” Griff guessed, bending closer to the remaining pistol to examine the workmanship.
“And very fine for the period.”
“Just not…fine enough for you?” A smile hovered at the corners of Cabot’s mouth as he posed the question.
“It isn’t enough to be merely beautiful.”
Beautiful and deadly. He had thought exactly that before, Griff realized, looking down on the lone dueling pistol.
And the word “deadly” would just as well describe the man before him. At one time Sinclair had been an extremely valuable weapon in the war Griff’s division of the CIA had waged against international terrorism. Although the External Security Team had eventually been disbanded by the agency, Sinclair’s own departure from the EST had occurred long before that decision had been made.
“What are you doing here, Griff? I thought we had an understanding.”
The question brought Cabot’s eyes up to focus on the man he had come to see. The inquiry was inevitable, of course, considering who and what they were.
“I’m not here about the Phoenix, although the offer to join us is still open.”
