LITMIR.BIZ

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or not they’d need to take him out. Things were going to be tricky enough as it was. They didn’t need some stranger throwing a monkey wrench into the works.

      “She was supposed to be on her own,” the woman muttered. “Isn’t that what Spencer told us?”

      “Yes.” Just the one word, but it conveyed a wealth of meaning.

      “How are we supposed to—”

      Her pseudo-husband cut her off. “I’ll think of something. I always do.”

      “Yes but—”

      “Quiet!” He cast her a quelling glance. “I’m trying to read their lips.” He cursed under his breath. “But the angle is all wrong, damn it! Why did you allow the hostess to seat us in this out-of-the-way table? If we were closer, I might be able to hear what they’re saying or at least read their lips.”

      “Why did I—It was you. You were the one who—”

      He brought his hand up sharply, and she fell silent. “Let’s go the buffet,” he said, standing abruptly. “Maybe we can maneuver into getting close enough to hear something. At least find out who the hell he is.”

      * * *

      Niall shook his head and the eerie feeling went away, but he wondered what it meant. He’d never suffered from vertigo before, but then, deep down, he knew it wasn’t vertigo. He just didn’t want acknowledge the real cause. To distract himself he said, “So your parents were killed in an accident. And then...?”

      “At first I was in shock. I mean...they weren’t that old. I just didn’t expect it, you know?”

      He nodded.

      “Not both of them at the same time. But as I was picking out clothes for them to be buried in, it came to me with such cruel irony that they never fulfilled their dream. They’d planned this trip for so long, and then—boom! They never got to take it. They never saw the Egyptian pyramids except in photographs. They never stood on the Acropolis and felt history all around them. They never gazed at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in awe and wonder. All the things they’d promised each other they’d do someday.”

      Her voice was little more than a whisper at this point, and Niall sensed she was talking more to herself than to him. She swallowed hard, and he knew she was holding back tears.

      “Someday never came for them. Death cheated them out of the someday they’d promised each other. I stood at their graves after the funeral, and I swore I wasn’t going to wait another day. I was going to do all the things I’d dreamed of doing, and I was going to do them now.”

      Niall saw it all then, and the relief that rushed through him was out of proportion to what she’d said. But it wasn’t out of proportion to what it meant to him.

      “I resigned the very next day. Everyone thought I was overreacting to my parents’ deaths, and would change my mind once I came to my senses. I knew that wasn’t going to happen, but they tried to convince me anyway. They wanted me to postpone my decision until I’d had time to think about it. No amount of thinking was going to make a difference, though. Does that make sense?”

      Niall nodded again.

      “I gave them a month’s notice, but I agreed to extend it to two because I still had to settle my parents’ estate, sell their house. Stuff like that. And I needed time to arrange some of the trips I wanted to take anyway, so...”

      She paused for a moment, then continued. “But I... I couldn’t explain the real reason I’d resigned to the people at work. They didn’t want to listen, and I’m not very good at talking about personal issues with them, anyway, especially my section hea—”

      She cut off the rest of what she’d started to say, and Niall filled in the blanks. Section head, by which he knew she meant her immediate supervisor at the internationally famous defense contractor—one of the top five in the US—where she’d worked up until a month ago.

      Her sudden reticence in discussing her job made more sense to him than it might have to someone who wasn’t in his line of work. Employees of defense contractors were strongly urged never to talk about what they did with outsiders, for fear of security leaks. Savannah had been a missile guidance, navigation and control engineer. She’d held a top secret clearance granted by the Department of Defense and had designed weapons the US relied upon to stay ahead of its enemies militarily.

      But he’d bet anything she’d resigned because she was fulfilling some kind of vow she’d made to herself and to her parents. Not because she was a potential traitor.

      Between her confession and everything he’d learned by hacking into her computer and searching her hotel room last night, it all boiled down to one thing: his assignment was most likely a total bust. Whoever had gotten it into his head that Savannah planned to sell what she knew to the Chinese government and had dispatched him here was way off base.

      If he didn’t need to worm his way into her confidence and compile evidence to arrest and convict her of espionage...if he didn’t need to worry about her betraying his country, either...that meant she wasn’t a security risk. Which also meant, even as a last resort, he wouldn’t have to kill her.

      And considering his reaction to kissing her earlier, that revelation was a godsend.

       Chapter 3

      “Oops!” said a voice behind Savannah as someone bumped into her chair. “Sorry about—Well, hey there!”

      She looked up and saw a face she recognized from their tour group, but she couldn’t immediately put a name to the face and searched in vain for a nametag.

      “Savannah Whitman, right?” the vivacious blonde said. “I’m Mary Beth, remember? Mary Beth Thompson. And this is my husband, Herb.” She turned to the man who’d come up beside her, holding a full plate. “Herb, you remember Savannah, right? We were on the same plane from San Francisco.”

      Mary Beth chattered away about the crowded conditions at the Great Wall. “All that pushing and shoving! So rude, too! Why, I could barely take a picture without someone walking right into the frame.” She moved on to discuss the factory they’d visited afterward. “Wasn’t that jade factory incredible? Did you buy anything? I could have spent a fortune. Good thing I had Herb with me,” Mary Beth said with a laugh, “or I’d have put a major dent in my credit card for sure! But I have to say, the food in the factory restaurant was just so-so, don’t you think? Not five-star like this restaurant.”

      Savannah couldn’t get a word in edgewise. But apparently Mary Beth didn’t need an answer to any of her questions. She just kept rolling on, and Savannah was terribly afraid at any moment Mary Beth would suggest she and her husband join them for dinner. Savannah didn’t want to—not only was she already getting a headache listening to Mary Beth’s incessant chatter, she also wanted Niall all to herself. But she didn’t know how she’d say no if...

      “Well, hello,” said another woman, stopping by their table, accompanied by a smiling man, both of whom looked familiar. “Weren’t you in our cable car going up to the Great Wall this morning?” she asked Savannah.

      “Oh. Oh yes, I think I was. It’s...” Savannah surreptitiously looked for a nametag she didn’t find, then searched her memory. “It’s Tammy and...and Martin, right?” she said triumphantly. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember your last name.”

      “Williams,” the man threw in.

      “That’s right. Sorry, I’m really bad with names.”

      Niall had risen when Mary Beth and her husband had stopped at their table, and had stayed standing. But after one quick glance at Savannah’s face, he politely but firmly made it very clear the other couples were de trop.

      Savannah smiled admiringly at Niall when they were alone again. “How did you do that?”

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