LITMIR.BIZ

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death.

      Emily was deeply afraid of not being in control, always. Because in her heart, Emily was terrified that she was really just like her mom. Weak.

      Dr. Anthony Dresden, a man she’d once respected on so many levels, had used her secret fears against her.

      He’d taken a substantial monetary bet one very drunken night over dinner with a group of his—and her—male colleagues. He’d wagered he could seduce the brainy ice queen—that’s what they called her—and make her fall for him. He’d bet he could date her longer than any of her previous relationships. He’d told his friends that it was more than sex for Emily, you had to get her at her own game, a mind game.

      It was pure betrayal.

      When their relationship had gone over that eighteen-month hurdle, Emily’s heart had begun to feel light, as if a huge weight had been lifted from her. She thought she might be truly in love, that Anthony was the one.

      Tears slid hotly and angrily down Emily’s face.

      He hadn’t collected on the bet.

      When she’d found out about it via the grapevine, she’d been devastated. Anthony told her he’d called the bet off because he’d come to care deeply for her. He said it had been a lark, something he should never have allowed to happen. He’d pleaded with her for the relationship to continue. That’s what made it worse—the fact that he said he really did love her.

      All he’d done was reinforce her deep-rooted pathological fears. Because in a powerfully intellectual and physically subtle way, Anthony was an alpha himself. She’d fallen for his calculated seduction, and he’d used her own mind against her. And everyone who mattered in her career knew about it.

      Emily threw herself back onto the pillow and closed her eyes tight. No, she could not go home.

      Not yet.

      Not until she’d proved something to herself.

       05:45 Zulu. Saturday, November 9. Ubasi Palace

      A soft peach bled into the ink sky. Monkeys stirred in the branches below, and the sound of birds rose in a soft chatter. Laroque stood on his balcony, hands flat on the balustrade, surveying the dark jungle canopy.

      The storm had blown through, and he was enjoying the rich scent of fecund earth. In a few hours the forest would be an oppressive place, steaming under the sun’s fire. He liked these predawn hours best.

      He hadn’t slept, but he was used to not sleeping. He’d learned since a boy how to push, and keep pushing, to rest only when the battle had been won. He wouldn’t be alive otherwise.

      “Sir?”

      He spun round to face Mathieu Ebongani, the technician who’d been busy with Emma’s equipment.

      “Mathieu, did you find anything?”

      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

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