The Perfect Target

No emotion underscored his words, or his expression. Not threat or regret, not ferocity or hostility. He sounded matter-of-fact. Almost…indifferent.

And in that moment, Miranda realized a fundamental truth. She’d stopped being afraid. Somewhere along the line she’d forgotten about the fear that had chased her down the streets and alleys, forgotten the cold certainty that this man wanted to hurt her. Or worse.

She’d forgotten to think at all.

But she was thinking now, more clearly by the second.

Vividly, she recalled the scene along the promenade, Hawk breaking toward her, the way he’d gone down, the stranger reacting without hesitation, the man in fatigues racing from around the corner, then falling only feet from her. Everything had unfurled almost methodically, carefully orchestrated step by carefully orchestrated step.

Horrified at her own gullibility, she swallowed hard.

“Think about it,” the man who’d just happened to be in the right place, at the right time, was saying. “How many kidnappers stand around and beg their prey to leave with them?”

The last of the fog cleared, leaving the truth shivering in the glare of the sun. The family net had closed around her once again. No wonder there’d been no warnings.

They’d have ruined her father’s pop quiz.

“Is that what you’re doing?” Incredulity drilled through her. Disappointment whispered along behind. “Begging?”

His gaze turned smoky. “Do I need to?”

Down the alley a door opened and closed, destroying the heated moment. Suddenly he was all warrior again, looking around, ready and alert. His eyes were dark, his mouth hard. Even his grip on the briefcase tightened.

And in that moment, she made her decision. “Give me back my knife.”

“What?”

“You want me to believe you’re on my side. Fine. Show me I can trust you. Show me I have no reason to be afraid.” Prove to me you’re who I think you are. “If I really have nothing to fear from you, you’ll give me back my knife.”

The man looked as though she’d just asked him to roll naked over hot coals. “So you can try to skewer me again?”

“I won’t try anything, so long as you don’t.”

He narrowed his eyes. “You’re testing me.”

“I’m asking you to trust me, no more, no less than you asked of me.” She stuck out her hand. “Actions speak louder than words, after all. So do we have a deal, or are you going to make me scream?”

That light glinted in his eyes again. He held her gaze as a slow smile curved his lips and bared startlingly white teeth.

“Trust me, bella,” he said, squatting to retrieve the knife, then placing the ivory hilt in her hand. Never once did he take his eyes off hers. “When I make a woman scream, it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with a knife.”

Miranda curled her fingers around the cherished gift from her grandfather, trying to focus on something, anything, other than the stranger’s smoky words and clever mouth, those big battered hands…

She had absolutely no business thinking about just how he might carry out his promise.

“Now come on,” he growled. “I doubt our shooter was traveling alone. I’ve got to get you off the streets before the bullets start flying again.”

He was good, she’d hand him that. The take-no-prisoners words destroyed any lingering doubt about his identity. And his employ. She’d heard those words, that tone, before. Many times. They were the hallmark of security personnel.

The words of a bodyguard.

“So what’s it going to be?” her father’s man asked. “Are you going to take your chances with me or wait for those thugs back there to find you? I doubt they’ll be as patient as I am.”

For now, she realized, she had few alternatives. This man meant business. She could go along with her father’s latest orders willingly, or she could resist and leave the stranger no choice but to exert force. And while the latter carried a rebellious little thrill, Miranda thought it wiser to lull him into the same sense of complacency her father had used with her.

She put her hand in his. “If we’re going to trust each other, the least you can do is tell me your name.”

“I thought the knife was all you wanted.”

Now that she knew what she was dealing with, she lifted a single eyebrow, determined not to give him the upper hand her father’s men always wanted.

“Since when has a knife been all a woman wants?” she challenged. Her mother constantly warned her about rattling cages, but she’d never been one to back down.

His smile was quick, blinding, devastating. “A man can dream, can’t he?”

“Is that really what you dream about? That a woman wants nothing from you but a blade?”

His gaze dipped from her face to where her blouse had fallen over her shoulder, down lower to her brightly colored skirt, all the way down to her leather sandals. Then he reversed his perusal, just as slowly, just as thoroughly.

“You really want to know what I dream about, bella?”

Heat washed through her, as though he’d touched her with those big capable hands and not just a look. The image formed before she could stop it, of what a man like him would dream about. She could see him too well, his big nude body thrashing about among tangled sheets—

“I’ll settle for a name,” she said.

“Smart lady.” He glanced toward the end of the alley, where two children ran after a scrawny black dog. Only when they turned the corner did he return his attention to her. “My friends call me Sandro.”

“And your enemies?” she couldn’t help asking.

He didn’t hesitate. “They’d like to call me dead.”

The brutally frank words made her wince. She couldn’t imagine this vital, capable man dead. Didn’t want to.

“Sandro what?” she asked instead.

“Just Sandro.”

Miranda didn’t know whether to laugh or slug him. “Watched a few spy movies growing up, did we?”

But his smile was gone now, replaced by that same grim expression she was already growing to despise. “Just Sandro, okay? It’s safer for us all.”

Safer from what, she wanted to ask, but knew she’d only be wasting her breath. Her father’s men never shot straight. They were always engaged in their little intrigues. If this man’s orders were to conceal his last name, not even cruel and unusual torture would pry the information free.

For now, it was better to indulge him.

Later, she would outsmart him.

Sandro picked up the pace, practically dragging her around a corner and down an even narrower alley.

“What did you say when that woman came out?” she asked. Before he put his mouth to hers and knocked the foundation from beneath her feet.

He kept walking, his long legs gobbling up the cracked cobblestone. “It doesn’t matter.”

She refused to break into a run to keep up with him. “It does to me.”

“Sweet nothings don’t translate well.”

“Sweet nothings?” She didn’t understand the little jolt of disappointment. “Sure sounded like something to me.”

He stopped abruptly, landing her in a lingering puddle from the storm the night before. Muddy water splashed up over her sandals and against her calves.

“If you must know,” he said, lifting a hand to her face and easing back the tangled blond hair, “I told her we’d had a lovers’ quarrel and I was trying to earn your forgiveness.”

The words, his touch, seared through her, the image they created as dangerous as the lingering feel of his mouth on hers. A quarrel. Lovers. A man and a woman, intimately involved. Big battered hands skimming along smooth—

Surprise flashed through her. Not only was this man a stranger, but he was one of her father’s chosen few. Men like him thrived in a world of intrigue and betrayal, a world where nothing was as it seemed and the truth often hid secrets more dangerous than lies.

A world she wanted desperately to leave behind.

“Does that usually work?” she wanted to know.

He quirked a dark brow. “What? Kissing a woman senseless?”

The smile broke before she could stop it. “No, lying through your teeth.”

He streaked a finger down the side of her face. “If I’m lucky.”

“And if you’re not?”

He took her hand and started down the street, his strides long and purposeful, determined. “There’s always Plan B.”

Plan B lay in ruins, much like the abandoned villa hiding behind an overgrown wall of olive trees and cork oaks, oleander and hibiscus.

Sandro bit back a virulent stream of frustration. He was a careful man. He did his job efficiently, and he did it well. He left no room for error.

But this time, with the stakes so dangerously high, error had found him anyway.

Plan B featured Miranda Carrington safe and sound with a bodyguard, not dragged through the dirty alleys of Cascais. He’d arranged the scenario carefully. He’d approached Miranda just as the general had ordered, making it appear he was luring her away. But he’d also arranged for his kidnapping attempt to be thwarted. He’d even planned to go down in the process.

But the agents he’d had breakfast with only an hour before had not arrived.

Straddling a thin dark line was a hell of a way to live. He’d been forced to stall, to keep Miranda in the open, in front of witnesses who would see the ambassador’s daughter forcibly wrested from him. Whether with Hawk Monroe or Plan A’s fatigue-clad security agent Pedro Vasquez, she should have been nearing Lisbon by now, hustled onto a plane out of the country. But an unknown assailant had mowed down both plans and both men, leaving Sandro with an angry woman and one hell of a problem.

Possession of Miranda Carrington didn’t figure into any of his plans, not C, not D, not even Z. Possession of Miranda Carrington went against every strategy, every rule, in the International Security Alliance operations manual. And unless Sandro played his cards right, the ominously silent ambassador’s daughter could not only ruin years worth of work, but get them both killed in the process. Again.

This time for good.

Staying alive demanded he find a way to unload his unwanted charge before anyone realized he had her. Her disappearance would be viewed as kidnapping, and the fallout would create an international fiasco. The United States government couldn’t sanction his actions, nor could the ISA claim him, not when doing so would forfeit years of undercover operations.

The low burn in his shoulder intensified, forcing Sandro to bite back a muttered curse. He had to maneuver out of this jam all by himself, just like he’d fallen into it. He’d long since learned the risk of putting his life into the hands of others. No way would he jeopardize the fate of an innocent woman.

The term collateral damage turned his stomach.

Frowning, he glanced at the woman walking beside him. He held her hand securely in his, but instinct warned touching Miranda Carrington required more than flesh to flesh contact. She held her chin high, shoulders back, those fascinating gypsy eyes focused on some point in the distance, as though being shot at and pursued through back alleys was an everyday occurrence.

“Almost there,” he said, unnerved by her silence. She hadn’t uttered a word in over thirty minutes, but he could tell she was thinking as rapidly as they were walking. He could only imagine the questions racing through her, the uncertainty.

He would get her inside, get her safe, then tell her what he could.

Which wasn’t much.

“Almost where?” she asked, but didn’t look at him.

He, on the other hand, couldn’t stop watching her, all that thick blond hair cascading around her face and over a shoulder bared by her loose-fitting crimson blouse, that lush mouth set in a mutinous line and those defiantly high cheekbones. He knew where he wanted to take her, all right.

He knew where he wanted her to take him.

He also knew he was flat out of his mind.

Javier was right. Sandro had been living in the shadows far too long.

But he felt the light now, the heat, and that was the problem. All because of one stupid kiss. A reckless, desperate measure to keep her from rousing suspicion in the local woman. An insane curiosity to see if her mouth would feel as welcoming as the long-ago tabloid picture had promised.

A smart man would erase the encounter from his memory. A smart man would forget the feel of her lips, the soft little sigh that had escaped. He’d expected her to slam her fists against his chest and shove him away, to stomp down on his feet, to fight. But she’d barely resisted. It was as though he’d laid siege to her with a stun gun rather than his mouth. She hadn’t been angry as he’d expected, as he deserved, but…frozen.

The realization should have brought him great relief.

It didn’t.

Stopping adjacent to a crumbling stone wall, he pointed toward an overgrown oleander, dotted by a showy display of bright pink flowers. “Just through here.”

She leaned closer. “Through where?”

He pulled a tangled clump of honeysuckle aside, revealing a broken-out section of the wall. The sun beat mercilessly against his back, but in the forgotten world beyond the opening, shadows beckoned. He itched to step through to the other side, to the familiar, secretive world in which he thrived.

“Through there,” he said.

Miranda pivoted toward him. In the space of a heartbeat the unflappable facade faded, replaced by a vulnerability he hadn’t sensed before. Hadn’t expected. Wariness glinted in the near-translucent green of her eyes, as though he’d asked her to go skinny-dipping in the frigid waters of the Atlantic, rather than crawl through a hole to safety.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked.

There was a threadiness to her voice now, one that unnerved him more than her earlier silence. Whereas she’d been all fire and defiance when she thought herself threatened, when he offered security, she pulled back.

“Somewhere safe,” he told her.

“This isn’t the way to the U.S. embassy.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Then I’ll ask you again. Where are you taking me?”

“Relax,” he said, glancing up and down the narrow street to ensure no one watched their movements. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

Her gaze remained wary, her stance alert, prompting Sandro to give her hand a gentle squeeze. Her flesh was clammy now, making her hand feel smaller. More fragile.

The temptation to pull her into his arms made absolutely no sense, so he discarded the misplaced notion and urged her toward the opening. “Hurry up. We need to get off the streets before anyone sees us. You can bet the shooter didn’t come alone.”

The reminder of the danger did the trick. She turned from him and climbed through the jagged opening in the stone wall. He followed, letting the thick vines swing into place behind him.

Only then did he breathe easier.

“My God,” she whispered. “It’s like stepping back in time.”

An old wall separated the overgrown grounds of the abandoned villa from the rest of the world. Exiled aristocrats had constructed the Moorish-influenced home in the waning years of the nineteenth century, the pastel-washed, stuccoed limestone walls providing shelter and security to generations of a family on the decline. Not even two world wars had penetrated the safe haven.

Only death had possessed that right.

When the great-grandson of the original owner passed away some ten years before, none of his seven children expressed interest in taking over the villa. They’d scattered to Italy and France, a daughter in Scotland, two sons in America, and the prospect of returning to the less modern culture of old-world Portugal had held little appeal.

“This place looks deserted,” Miranda said.

He tossed her a wicked little wink. “That’s the point.”

The villa stood abandoned now, a shadow of its former glory. Red clay roof tiles were cracked and faded; vines had long since taken over pale yellow walls that retained only a hint of their former color. Even the blue and yellow clay tiles framing the broken-out windows were chipped. Azulejos they were called, imitating familiar patterns of Moorish rugs.

Miranda walked toward a crumbling statue of the Virgin Mary, who rose from a tangle of thigh-high sage and stood with her arms outstretched toward the old house. “She looks…sad.”

Sandro joined her. “She’ll keep us safe,” he said, reclaiming Miranda’s hand and leading her toward the entry-way.

Like so many other houses of central Portugal, the neglected villa boasted a wide front porch, framed by a series of three archways. The second story featured two smaller verandas, with the third story reserved for windows, dark now, almost gaping, like an old woman smiling through missing teeth.

The scent of rosemary grew stronger with every step, escorting them through an overgrown herb garden sprawling over the steps and engulfing the porch. Miranda broke off a stem as they passed.

“Through here,” Sandro said, leading her inside.

“It’s dark.”

“You’ll adjust.” He kept her hand in his and headed along the familiar path to the back of the house, carefully checking for signs of unwanted visitors. Only a few hours had passed since his last inspection, but a man could never be too careful.

Beneath the stairs at the back of the house, he opened a small closet and pulled Miranda into the darkness.

“Just stay close,” he instructed, whispering even though he didn’t need to.

She stopped abruptly and tried to pull her hand free. “Where are we?”

Her voice was sharp, frightened. And in the ensuing silence, he could hear the frenetic rhythm of her breathing. The pounding of her heart. “Just a little further.”

“But—”

“Shh,” he soothed. “Trust me.”

She didn’t bother pointing out that she had no choice. He hadn’t given her one.

Against the back wall, Sandro reached up and knocked twice against a hollow portion. A panel slid open, granting them access to a narrow stairway. He retrieved a flashlight from the ledge where he’d left it that morning and turned it on, drenching the narrow corridor in light.

“Straight up there,” he said.

Disbelief flooded her expression. “A secret passageway?”

He shrugged. “Sometimes paranoia is its own reward.”

At the top of the stairs he opened another panel, this one leading to the small room where he’d slept the night before and on several other occasions when he’d needed to melt into the shadows for a few days.

Miranda stared at the threadbare sleeping bag crammed against the far wall.

“There’s no electricity,” he told her, “but thanks to a well outside, we’re okay for water.”

She followed his gesture toward the small chamber off the side of the room, where a primitive toilet and shower stood in equal abandon.

“We’re staying here?” she asked, hugging her arms around her waist.

Compassion tugged at him. Compared to the ritzy resort she’d been staying at back in town, this small dank room rated somewhere between slum and prison. “You’ll be safe here, Miranda. I promise. That’s what counts.”

She stiffened for a moment, then spun toward him, eyes flashing with a fire he hadn’t seen since before he’d put his mouth to hers in the alley. “What did you say?”

“This is a safe house,” he explained, trying to restore the calm. “No one will find us here.”

She shook her head almost violently, sending tangled blond hair over her shoulders. “No. What did you call me?”

“Miranda.”

“Miranda?” She stepped back from him, her stance alert. “You think my name is Miranda?”

“I know it is.”

Her gaze sharpened, her expression pensive. “Well, that explains that,” she muttered. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but there’s been a mistake. You’ve got the wrong woman.”

Now it was his turn to stare. He studied her standing there, all that blond hair spilling over her shoulders, those unusual eyes imploring. Could he have—

No. He hadn’t made a mistake. No way.

Mistakes got men like him killed.

“You’re the right woman,” he insisted, battling an admiration he didn’t want to feel. “I’m a very thorough man. You’re Miranda Carrington, youngest daughter of Peter Carrington, the U.S. ambassador to Ravakia and youngest granddaughter of the late Albert Carrington, former U.S. senator and one-time presidential hopeful.”

She shook her head. “Didn’t you see that man and woman kissing by the boardwalk?”

“Yes.” But only for a moment. The second he’d locked onto Miranda, the rest of the busy promenade had dissolved.

“I overheard them talking. She’s Miranda.” Sincerity and conviction laced the claim. “She has dark brown hair, not blond.”

Sandro crossed his arms over his chest, wincing when the motion pulled against his shoulder. He knew she had a penchant for giving her bodyguards hell, had played enough games to recognize a pro when he saw one. She clearly thought she could play him.

He just didn’t understand why she wanted to.

“Let me see your passport.”

“By all means.” She dipped a hand into the satchel slung over her shoulder and pulled out a well-worn blue passport bearing the emblem of the United States. Flipping it open, he studied the picture of a gorgeous blonde, the accompanying name and address.

As far as forgeries went, the ambassador’s daughter had a beaut in her possession.

“Astrid, huh?” Somehow, he kept the laughter from his voice.

She nodded. “That’s right.”

“Astrid Van Dyke of Stockholm,” he mused, “who just happens to have Carrington eyes. And,” he drawled, executing a lightning-quick move to bare the shoulder still covered by the crimson blouse, “her tattoo.”

She froze, like an exquisite dragonfly captured in amber, wings forever in flight. Just like the one imprinted on her upper arm. Her face drained of all color, all expression.

And then she started to shake.

Regret hit hard and fast, but he shoved the useless emotion aside before it muddied the waters any further.

“Don’t look so confused, bella,” he told her, his voice deliberately husky. He kept his hand on her arm, his fingers tracing the tattoo. “A woman like you doesn’t go unnoticed. A woman like you doesn’t just fade into the shadows or melt into crowds. A woman like you cannot hide, not even from yourself.”

She backed away. “What do you mean, ‘a woman like me’?”

The way she spat the words, Sandro would have thought he’d accused her of something hideous. He looked at her standing there, green gypsy eyes too big and dark against her pale face, that lush mouth he wanted to taste again still swollen from his earlier mistake.

“Beautiful,” he said. “Intelligent. Full of life. Living, breathing sunshine.”

She lifted a hand to her mouth, but said nothing.

“Why the games?” he asked, steering the conversation to safe ground. The questions rattling through him didn’t bear answering. “Did you really think I’d just let you waltz out of here?”

She shoved the hair from her face, managing to look alarmingly provocative as she did so. “Maybe I’m just playing the same kind of game you are. The same kind of game he is.”

Game? “What are you talking about? Who is he?”

Resentment flashed in her gaze, bringing color back to her cheeks. “Look, I know who you are, okay? I know what this is all about.”

“Of course you know who I am. I told you.”

“Not your name—names don’t matter. I know what’s going on here, why you were on the promenade, why we’re here now. I know who you work for and what you want, and I can tell you right now it’s not going to work.”

Sandro went very still, all but his heart. It slammed against his ribs. She spoke with fire and conviction, making his blood run cold. She couldn’t know. She couldn’t. Only a handful of people did.

And only that handful knew he was still alive.

Chapter 3

For the first time since they’d met alongside the ocean, Mr. Confident didn’t look quite so sure of himself. He stood unmoving, his midnight eyes wild, his mouth a hard line. Even the shadow against his jaw seemed darker. He stood with his feet shoulder-width apart, arms at his side, hands curled into semifists.