Hero Under Cover

“Zingy dialogue, a great sense of drama, and a pair of lovers who generate enough steam heat to power a whole city.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on Hero Under Cover

“Brockmann deftly delivers another testosterone-drenched, adrenaline-fueled tale of danger and desire that brilliantly combines superbly crafted, realistically complex characters with white-knuckle plotting.”

—Booklist on Force of Nature

“Readers will be on the edge of their seats.”

—Library Journal on Breaking Point

“Another excellently paced, action-filled read. Brockmann delivers yet again!”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on Into the Storm

“Funny, sexy, suspenseful, and superb.”

—Booklist on Hot Target

“Sizzling with military intrigue and sexual tension, with characters so vivid they leap right off the page, Gone Too Far is a bold, brassy read with a momentum that just doesn’t quit.”

—New York Times bestselling author Tess Gerritsen

“An unusual and compelling romance.”

—Affaire de Coeur on No Ordinary Man

“Sensational sizzle, powerful emotion and sheer fun.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on Body Language

Hero Under Cover

Suzanne Brockmann

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For those fabulous Kuhlmans—

Bill, who’s been trying to teach

me simply to be happy, and Jodie,

who’s been showing us all how

to be happy for years

CONTENTS

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

CHAPTER ONE

“YOU’RE GOING TO DOwhat!”

“A strip search,” the FBI agent said, heading for the door. “Please follow me.”

Dr. Annie Morrow crossed her arms and planted herself firmly. She wasn’t going anywhere, that was for damn sure. “You’ve gone through my luggage with a fine-tooth comb, you’ve X-rayed the hell out of my purse, and now you want to do a strip search? This is harassment, plain and simple. You’ve held me here for nearly five hours without letting me contact an attorney. My civil rights are being violated, pal, and I’ve had damn near enough.”

On the other side of the one-way mirror, CIA operative Kendall “Pete” Peterson stood silently, watching Dr. Anne—nickname Annie—Morrow, renowned archaeologist and art historian, professional artifact authenticator. According to her file, she was thirty-two years old, and one of the world’s foremost experts on ancient metalworkings—coins, statues, works of art, jewelry. The daughter of two archaeologists, she’d been born on a dig in Egypt. She’d lived in thirteen different countries and participated in nineteen different excavations, and that was before she’d even attended college.

What the file didn’t tell him was that she was filled with a seemingly limitless supply of energy. During the course of the five hours he’d been watching her, she had sat still for only a very short time. Mostly she paced; sometimes she stood, she leaned, she tapped her foot, but generally she moved around the small interrogation room like a caged animal.

The file also didn’t describe the stubborn tilt to her chin, or the way her blue eyes blazed when she was angry. In fact, the photo included hadn’t managed to capture much of anything out of the ordinary, except maybe her long, shining brown hair, and her almost too-sensuous lips.

But in person, in motion, she was beautiful….

“So that’s our little Dr. Morrow,” came a voice at his shoulder.

Peterson turned to look at Whitley Scott, the man in charge of the FBI side of the investigation. Scott smiled at him, his eyes crinkling behind his thick glasses. “Sorry I’m late, Captain,” he said. “My flight was delayed.”

Peterson didn’t smile back. “We’ve been holding her for hours,” he said. “She’s pretty steamed.”

Through the speaker system, he could hear Dr. Morrow still arguing with FBI agent Richard Collins.

“I’ve told you nine million times, or is it ten million now? I was in England to pick up an artifact—a gold-cast death mask from the nineteenth century—for a client. I wasn’t out of the U.S. long enough to do whatever illicit crimes you’re trying to accuse me of. The shipping papers for the death mask are all in order—you’ve admitted that much,” she said. “What I’d like to know is when you intend to let me leave.”

“After the strip search,” Collins said. He was a good man for this job, Peterson thought. Collins could outargue anyone. He was solid, steady and extremely patient. And he was absolutely never fazed.

“She’s just your type, Pete,” Whitley said, with a sideways glance at the taller man. “Something tells me you’re going to enjoy this job.”

Peterson didn’t smile, but his dark brown eyes flashed in Scott’s direction for a microsecond. “She’s too skinny,” he said.

In the interrogation room, Annie Morrow had had enough. She slammed her hand down on the table, pulling herself up and out of the chair she’d recently thrown herself into. “You want to strip-search me?” she said. “Fine. Strip-search me and let me get the hell out of here.”

She shrugged out of her baggy linen jacket, tossing it onto a chair as she kicked her sneakers off. A quick yank pulled her loose red shirt over her head, and she quickly unbuttoned her pants.

“Umm…” Collins said, rattled. “Not here…”

“Why not?” Annie asked much too sweetly, her eyes bright with anger as she stood in the middle of the room in her underwear. “Oh, relax. I have bathing suits that are more revealing than this.”

A slow grin spread across Peterson’s face. Man, she’d managed to faze Collins. She knew darn well he had wanted her to follow him to a private room where she’d be searched by a female agent. Yet she’d undressed in front of him, simply to upset him. He felt a flash of something, and realized that he liked her—he liked her spirit, her energy, her nerve. He frowned. She was a suspect, under investigation. He wasn’t supposed to like her. Respect, admire even, but not like. But, man, standing there, looking at her, he found an awful lot to like.

Annie turned and gestured toward the mirror, hands on her hips. “Don’t you think the rest of the boys want to get in on the fun?”

She knew they were watching her. She was really something, really sharp. Her file said she’d had a 4.0 average throughout college, graduating with a Ph.D. in half the time it normally took. He liked smart women, particularly when they came wrapped in a package like this one.

Her bra and panties were both black and lacy, contrasting the smooth paleness of her fair skin. Her breasts were full, her waist narrow, flaring out to slender hips and long, beautiful legs. “I take it back,” Pete said to Whitley Scott. “She’s not too skinny.”

She seemed to be looking directly at him. He could see the pulse beating in her neck. Each ragged, angry breath she took made her breasts rise and fall.

“Do you intend to harass me every time I leave and re-enter the country?” she said.

Pete glanced at Whitley. The older man shrugged. “She’s looking right at you,” Whitley said.

“You know she can’t see me,” Pete said, but he motioned for the mike to be turned on. “The Athens investigation,” he said, raising his voice so the mike would pick him up, “hasn’t been closed.”

Annie threw up her hands and began to pace. “Well, there we go,” she said. “We’re finally getting somewhere. You are trying to harass me. You don’t give a damn about this death mask. You still think I have something to do with the jerks that bombed and robbed that museum.”

Pete tried to keep his attention on her words instead of her body. But it wasn’t easy. She moved like a cat, the muscles in her legs rippling….

“How many times do I have to tell you that I am not a thief?” she continued. “Shoot, I wish I were. It would make this a whole hell of a lot easier. But I’m not about to confess to crimes I didn’t commit.”

She stopped pacing, coming back to stare directly up at him again. It was eerie, as if she really could see him through the glass.

“There was an explosion and a robbery at the gallery in England two hours after you left it,” Peterson said, his voice distorted over the cheap speakers. “This time, people died.”

Peterson watched Annie’s face carefully as a range of emotions battled through her. Anger finally won.

“So, naturally, you believe I was involved. That’s great, that’s really great. Innocent people die, and the best you guys can do is to give me a hard time as I get on and off planes. You should be over there chasing the creeps that did the bombing, not playing peekaboo with somebody who gets queasy when she cuts her finger, pal.”

“Doesn’t it seem a little strange that you should go to European art galleries twice in five months, and within hours after you leave, each of them is hit by a bomb and a robbery?” Peterson had been in this business long enough to know that when there was smoke, somebody was trying to hide a fire. He wasn’t buying the indignant act. “How do you explain the fact that you left the Athens convention hours before anyone else?”

“I don’t!” Annie countered, eyes aflame. “I’ve already told the FBI, and the CIA, and everyone else who’s asked, that I left because I’d seen everything at the exhibit and I wanted to catch an early flight home.” She was pacing the floor now, clearly upset. “What ever happened to innocent until proven guilty? Huh? Just what the hell is going on here?” she shouted, right through the glass at Peterson.

There was silence. Big fat silence. It disarmed her as Pete knew it would. Dr. Anne Morrow was low on patience, and impatient people didn’t like being made to wait. She turned, gathering her clothes. “If we’re through…” she said pointedly.

“But we’re not,” Pete said. “It’s called a strip search for a reason.”

What little remained of her patience snapped. “Oh, give me a break,” she said, throwing down her clothes and striding over to the mirror. She came up really close—close enough for Pete to see the details of her thick, dark lashes and the streaks of lighter color in the deep blue of her eyes. Close enough for him to see that her skin was as smooth and soft as it looked. If the glass of the window hadn’t been between them, he could have lifted his hand and touched her.

Peterson felt Whitley watching him, and somehow he managed to remain expressionless. But, man, it had been a long time since he’d looked at a woman and wanted her this badly. It had been a real long time.

“I assure you that everything I’m hiding in my underwear is attached, pal,” she said. “No removable parts.”

“Sorry,” he said. “I’m being paid a lot of money not to trust you.”

“What exactly are you looking for?” she asked. “Maybe if you tell me, I can check and see if I’ve got it on me somewhere.”

“You ever hear of mules?” Pete asked.

She froze.

He’d managed to shock her, but somehow he didn’t feel triumphant about it. “Mules are people who smuggle illegal substances into the country inside their bodies,” he said.

“I know what a mule is,” she said. “Tell me honestly, do you really think I’ve swallowed the crown jewels? Whole?”

“Not swallowed,” he said, and then was silent, letting her figure it out for herself.

“Oh, Christmas,” she said. Her face paled slightly beneath her tan, and her freckles stood out. “We’re really trying to go for total humiliation here, aren’t we?”

“Just going by the book,” Pete said. “And the book says that you’ll be searched—completely. We have a physician waiting in another room.”

“Oh, you mean you don’t want to do it right here?” Annie said. She was furious. He could almost see her pulse accelerating as he watched the vein in her neck. “You sure you trust this doctor to do it right, pal? I would’ve thought you’d want to watch.”

“I’d love to watch,” he said, his voice coming out low and intimate, even through the tinny speakers. “And by the way, the name’s not pal.”

“I prefer to personalize the disembodied voices that talk to me,” she said. “It helps me feel more human. But you wouldn’t know about that, would you?”

She turned away from the window suddenly, but not before he saw the glint of tears in her eyes.

Pete felt ashamed of himself. What was wrong with him? Why did he have to be so rough on her?

He was rough on her because he felt for her, because he found himself believing her. And he had absolutely no facts to back him up, just gut instinct. Gut, thought Pete, yeah, right. Aim a little lower…. He couldn’t let himself forget that Dr. Anne Morrow was a suspect, quite possibly a thief, connected to people who wouldn’t think twice about killing to satisfy their greed.

He watched her pull on her pants and then her shirt as the female agent led her from the room. With a nod, he ordered the microphone connection cut.

Whitley Scott was watching him.

“She’s gutsy,” Pete said to him. “You’ve got to give her that much.”

“I think she’s hiding something,” Scott said. “We’ve got to find a way to get closer to her. But how?”

“Good question.” Pete leaned against the back wall of the room, crossing his arms in front of him. “I’m not exactly qualified to work in her laboratory. Or even on one of her digs.”

“Client?” Whitley asked. “You could bring her some rare artifact to authenticate. One thing leads to another—a little dinner, a little who knows what, and she’s telling you her deepest, darkest secrets.”

“Perfect,” Pete said expressionlessly. “Except she never dates her clients as a rule. No exception.”

“Next-door neighbor?”

“She lives over her lab in a restored Victorian house up in Westchester County,” Pete said. “Expensive neighborhood. Way out of our budget. It would cost us close to half a million to buy one of the houses next door—provided someone was even willing to sell. And I’ve already checked—no one wants to rent.”

Whitley nodded, turning toward the door. “Well, keep thinking,” he said. “We’ll come up with something sooner or later.”

CHAPTER TWO

ANNIE PULLED HER LITTLE HONDA into the driveway and turned the engine off. Damn, she was tired. Damn the CIA and damn the FBI and damn everyone who was working so hard to make her life so miserable.

Five months. The harassment had been going on almost nonstop for five months. And now, after the bombing in England, it was only going to get worse. Already everyone in town knew that she was the subject of an FBI investigation. The agents had talked with everyone she knew, and probably a lot of people she didn’t know. Her college roommate had called last month to say that even she’d been questioned about Annie. And it had been five years since they’d last gotten together….

Damn, damn, damn, she thought. And particularly damn that horrible man who’d spoken to her from behind the one-way window. Somebody had referred to him as Captain Peterson. If she ever ran into him, she’d let him have a good swift kick where it counted. Except she didn’t have a clue what he looked like. She wouldn’t even be able to recognize him from his voice, not from hearing it over those awful interrogation room speakers.

She stepped out of the car and went around to the other side to pull the package from England from the passenger seat. Damn these gold artifacts, too, she thought, as she barely lifted the crate. They always weigh a ton.

Her assistant’s car was still in the driveway, so instead of going up to her apartment on the top floors of the house, Annie went into the lab. She could hear the sound of the computer keyboard clacking and followed it to the back room, where the office was set up.

Cara MacLeish was inputting data at her usual breakneck speed. She didn’t even stop as she looked up and grinned.

“Welcome back,” she said. Her short brown curls stood straight up in their usual tangle, and her eyes were warm behind her horn-rimmed glasses. “I thought you’d be here sooner. Like six hours ago.”

Annie lowered the crate holding the gold death mask onto her desk top, then brushed some strands of hair back from her face. “I was detained,” she said simply.

Cara stopped typing, giving her boss her full, sympathetic attention, swearing imaginatively.

“Took the words right out of my mouth,” Annie said, smiling ruefully.

“FBI again?” Cara asked.

“FBI, CIA.” Annie shrugged. “They all want a piece of me.”

“Well, look on the bright side,” Cara suggested.

They both fell silent, trying to find one.

“They haven’t been able to make any charges stick,” Cara finally said.

Annie pulled a rocking chair closer to the computer console and sat down.

“And you haven’t lost any business because of this,” Cara said, warming up to it now. She stretched her thin arms over her head, then yawned, standing up to get the kinks out of her long legs. “In fact, I think business has picked up. We had a ton of calls while you were away.”

Annie watched her assistant cross to the telephone answering machine. Next to it, a stack of little pink message slips were held by a bright red wooden duck with a clothespin for a mouth.

“Jerry Tillit called,” Cara said. “He’s back from South America, and he’s got some Mayan stuff for you to look at.”

“Did you talk to him, or get the message off the machine?” Annie asked.

Cara blushed. “I spoke to him.”

“Did he ask you out again?” Annie grinned.

“Yes.”

“And…?”

“We don’t date clients, remember?” Cara said.

Annie corrected her. “Jerry’s not a client, he’s a friend.”

“He’s also a client.”

“So he’s also a client,” Annie admitted. “But just because I don’t want to date clients doesn’t mean you can’t, MacLeish. Will you please give the man a break?”

“I did.”

“You…What?”

The taller woman grinned, pushing her hair back from her face and sitting down on top of the desk. “I told him I’d go out with him. He’s coming up to drop his finds off this Saturday. We’re going out after that.”

Annie glanced around the cozy office. The room was really quite large, but with two desks, two computers, a fax machine, a copier and all sorts of chairs and bookshelves, there wasn’t much room even to walk. But Cara MacLeish was an essential fixture here. “Don’t you be going and getting married, MacLeish,” she said sternly. “No running off to South America with Jerry Tillit.”

Cara grinned. “I’m only going to the movies with him,” she said. “The next logical step might be a dinner date. Not marriage.”

“You don’t know Tillet as well as I do,” Annie muttered. “And that man has a definite thing for you….”

“Speaking of marriage,” Cara said, flipping through the phone message slips. “Nick York called—five different times. Something about a party down at the Museum of Modern Art sometime this month.”

Annie released her hair from its ponytail, letting it swing free in a gleaming brown sheet. She leaned back in the rocking chair, resting her feet on top of the computer desk. “Shame on you, MacLeish. You know the words marriage and York cannot be uttered in the same sentence,” she said. “York wants only two things from me. One of them is free lab work. And the other has nothing to do with marriage. Who else called?”

“The freight guy at Westchester Airport said a package from France will be in Saturday.”

“Great.” Annie sighed. “Like I’ve got any chance of getting to work on it in the next decade.” She closed her eyes. “Okay, so I pick it up on Saturday. What else?”

“A guy named Benjamin Sullivan called,” Cara said. “Ring any bells?”

Annie’s eyes popped open. “Yeah, of course. He’s the owner of the piece I just picked up. What did he want?”

“He left a message on the machine, saying that we should ignore Alistair Golden if he calls,” Cara said. She laughed. “I didn’t recognize Sullivan’s name, but it seemed kind of mystically, cosmically correct to get a message from a stranger telling us to ignore Golden. I always ignore Alistair Golden. Ignoring Golden is one of the things I do best.”

Golden was Annie’s chief competitor, and he usually handled all the U.S.-bound artworks and artifacts from the English Gallery.

“And sure enough,” Cara said, snickering, “the little weasel called. He was in a real snit, whining about something—I’m not sure exactly what, because I was working very hard to ignore him.”

Annie laughed. “I think I know what the bug up his pants was,” she said. “When I got to the gallery, Sullivan’s package was already crated and sealed. Golden had assumed he’d be doing the authentication job, so he’d already done the packing work.”

“Golden packed the crate for you?” Cara said with great pleasure. “No wondering his whine was set on stun. He wanted you to call him back, but unless you want to subject yourself to a solid forty-five minutes of complaining, I wouldn’t. I give you my permission to use the ‘scatterbrained employee didn’t give me the message’ excuse for the next time he catches up with you.”

Annie smiled. “Thanks. Did Ben Sullivan want me to call him back?”

“He said something about going out of town,” Cara said, glancing back at the phone message slip. “Who is he? How do you know him? Come on, fill me in. Height, weight, marital status?”

“As far as I know, he’s single,” Annie said, then smiled. “But he’s also seventy-five years old, so get that matchmaking gleam out of your eyes.”

Cara made a face in disappointment.

“Ben’s an old friend of my parents.” Annie leaned back in her chair, breathing deeply. “I don’t think I’ve seen him since, wow, since I was about fifteen. Apparently, he was talking to Mom and Dad recently, and they told him about me—you know, that I opened this lab a few years ago. When the offer to buy came in on this death mask, he requested that I do the necessary authentication.”

“Instead of Golden,” Cara said.

Annie grinned. “Instead of Golden.” She sat forward, stretching her arms over her head. “Anyone else call?”

Cara nodded. “Yeah. I saved the best message for last. It came in on the answering machine. Let me play it for you.”

Cara slid off the table, handing Annie the message slips, then pushed the message button on the machine. The tape rewound quickly, then a voice spoke.

It was odd, all whispery and strange, as if the caller had deliberately tried to disguise his voice. “The mask you have gained possession of does not belong to the world of the living. It is the property of Stands Against the Storm. Deliver it at once to his people, or be prepared to face his evil spirit’s rage. The doors to the twilight world are opened wide, and Stands Against the Storm will take you back with him.”

There was a click as the line was disconnected. Cara punched one of the buttons on the machine and the tape stopped running. “So, okay.” She grinned. “Which one of your weirdo friends left that message? And who the heck is Stands Against the Storm?”

But Annie wasn’t laughing. Swearing softly under her breath, she stood up, hoisted the crate containing the death mask off her desk and went down the hall toward the lab. Cara followed, her grin fading.

“What?” Cara asked, watching as Annie locked the front door. “What’s the matter?”