She sounded shocked. There was no other word to describe her startled, breathless gasp. For one awful instant he thought that her senses had rebelled after all. The possibility that he was giving her pain, not pleasure, was too terrible to contemplate.
But she did not try to escape. Instead, she buried her face against his neck and clung to him. He felt the small contractions of her climax ripple through her body; sensed them flashing through her aura.
When it was over he was almost as relieved as she was.
“Hell,” he said into her hair. “Don’t ever scare me like that again. For a second there I thought I was hurting you.”
She made a weak, muffled sound into his shirt. It took him a while to realize that she was laughing. She was limp against him. Her breathing was that of a swimmer who had just made it back to the surface after nearly drowning.
He held her tightly, trying to get his own breathing as well as his raging need under control.
After a while he realized that she was no longer laughing. The front of his shirt was soaked with tears.
“Grace?”
“Don’t worry.” She did not raise her face from his shirtfront. “I’m all right. It’s just that I haven’t felt anything quite like that before.”
He smiled into her hair. “Neither have I.”
She stilled and then raised her head. “But you didn’t—”
“It’s okay.” He stroked the wings of her hair back behind her ears. “I think you need some time to process this.”
“I think you’re right. I feel like I’ve been on a roller coaster all day.”
“You’re not the only one.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, chagrined. “I never meant that to happen. I realize it’s highly unprofessional.”
He covered her mouth with his fingertips, silencing her.
“Whatever you do,” he growled, “don’t tell me you’re sorry about what just happened. That’s the one thing I do not want to hear. Are we clear on that?”
She hesitated and then nodded once.
He took his hand off her mouth, eased her away from him and grabbed the cane. They walked back to the hotel in moonlight and silence, not touching.
TEN
Harry Sweetwater felt the faint vibration of his cell phone just as he left the beach path and started up the steps to his hotel. He checked the incoming number and then stopped in the shadows of a large palm to take the call.
“Hello, Gorgeous,” he said.
“Hello, Handsome,” Alison said.
The ritual greeting between them was as old as their relationship. It had started on their first date thirty-four years earlier.
“Are you in position?” Alison asked.
He pictured his wife at her pristine desk, heavily encrypted computer and phones neatly at hand. The desk was in a small, anonymous office housed in a large commercial tower located on a convenient, offshore island. Most of the other firms in the building offered financial assistance to those who found it necessary to give their money a thorough cleansing before investing it in legitimate enterprises. Among such a group of discreetly run businesses, a small, family-owned enterprise that offered special services to an exclusive clientele went unnoticed.
“All set,” he said. “Got a room in the hotel next to the one the target is going to check into tomorrow.”
“I’m starting to think that we may have a problem with the client, Harry.”
He didn’t question the conclusion. Alison was a high-level intuitive.
“We’ve done a lot of work for Number Two,” he said.
They only had two clients. It kept things simple in the customer relations department.
“Everything looks right,” Alison said. “Two is using the right security codes. I’m not sure what’s bothering me about this job. Maybe something to do with the way the client is trying to micromanage it.”
“You got another e-mail?”
“Yes. It came in a few minutes ago requesting another update. That’s not routine. In the past, once Two has commissioned a job, there has been no further contact unless something changes. When the contract is completed, the money shows up in our account and that’s the end of the matter.”
That was true. In his experience, neither of the two clients ever wanted to know anything more than what was absolutely necessary about the details of the work that had been commissioned. Ignorance was bliss or maybe it just let the clients sleep better at night.
“Did you initiate a reverse security check?” he asked.
“Yes. I got the right response but something just doesn’t feel right.”
“Think we’ve been hacked?”
“I’ve got Jon checking that angle now. He doesn’t think our computers have been invaded but there’s always the possibility that someone has gotten inside Two’s system.”
He felt a flash of fatherly pride. His youngest son was brilliant when it came to computers; preternaturally so. Jon was a crypto, a strat talent with a twist that made it possible for him to plot patterns and follow complex paths in the new dimension that was cyberspace. He wasn’t a true hunter like most of the other males in the Sweetwater family, but he possessed all the right instincts. If anyone could track a hacker back to his lair, he could.
“Tell Jon to keep looking,” he said to Alison. “We’ve got time. Mistakes are embarrassing.”
“I’ll get back to you as soon as I know anything more.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
“How’s Maui?”
“Warm. Balmy breezes. Palm trees. Beach. Hell, it’s an island.”
Alison laughed. “I can always tell when you’re working. You never take time to stop and smell the plumeria flowers.”
“Not when I’m on a job.”
But even as he said the words, an uneasy sensation twisted through him. A few minutes before, he had been running wide open, doing some basic recon on the beachfront path. But somewhere along the line he had unintentionally relaxed and slipped back into his normal senses. That wasn’t like him. He always stayed at least partially alert while on a job. He had been taught from the cradle that it was critical to maintain constant awareness of the immediate environment. The smallest details could lead to disaster. Screwups were not good for business.
So what the hell had happened to him out there on the path? The thought that he might be losing his edge at the grand old age of fifty-nine was depressing. His father and grandfather had worked into their seventies. Sure, they had slowed down a little with the passage of the years, but experience had more than compensated for what they lost in raw speed and psychic sensitivity. In the end it wasn’t a decline in talent that had forced them into retirement. They had both been dragged into it, kicking and screaming, by their wives.