A Game Of Chance. Linda Howard
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in front of her and laughed aloud when she saw the small mirror attached to it.
Chance walked around the plane, checking details one last time before climbing into the seat to her left and buckling himself in. He put on a set of headphones and began flipping switches while he talked to the air traffic control tower. The engine coughed, then caught, and the propeller on the nose began to spin, slowly at first, then gaining speed until it was an almost invisible blur.
He pointed to another set of headphones, and Sunny put them on. “It’s easier to talk using the headphones,” came his voice in her ear, “but be quiet until we get airborne.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, amused, and he flashed a quick grin at her.
They were airborne within minutes, faster than she had ever experienced on a commercial carrier. Being in the small plane gave her a sense of speed that she had never before felt, and when the wheels left the ground the lift was incredible, as if she had sprouted wings and jumped into the air. The ground quickly fell away below, and the vast, glistening blue lake spread out before her, with the jagged mountains straight ahead.
“Wow,” she breathed, and brought one hand up to shield her eyes from the sun.
“There’s an extra pair of sunglasses in the glove box,” he said, indicating the compartment in front of her. She opened it and dug out a pair of inexpensive but stylish Foster Grants with dark red frames. They were obviously some woman’s sunglasses, and abruptly she wondered if he was married. He would have a girlfriend, of course; not only was he very nice to look at, he seemed to be a nice person. It was a combination that was hard to find and impossible to beat.
“Your wife’s?” she asked as she put on the glasses and breathed a sigh of relief as the uncomfortable glare disappeared.
“No, a passenger left them in the plane.”
Well, that hadn’t told her anything. She decided to be blunt, even while she wondered why she was bothering, since she would never see him again after they arrived in Seattle. “Are you married?”
Again she got that quick grin. “Nope.” He glanced at her, and though she couldn’t see his eyes through the dark glasses, she got the impression his gaze was intense. “Are you?”
“No.”
“Good,” he said.
Chance watched her from behind the dark lenses of his sunglasses, gauging her reaction to his verbal opening. The plan was working better than he’d hoped; she was attracted to him and hadn’t been trying very hard to hide it. All he had to do was take advantage of that attraction and win her trust, which normally might take some doing, but what he had planned would throw her into a situation that wasn’t normal in any sense of the word. Her life and safety would depend on him.
To his faint surprise, she faced forward and pretended she hadn’t heard him. Wryly, he wondered if he’d misread her and she wasn’t attracted to him after all. No, she had been watching him pretty blatantly, and in his experience, a woman didn’t stare at a man unless she found him attractive.
What was really surprising was how attractive he found her. He hadn’t expected that, but sexual chemistry was an unruly demon that operated outside logic. He had known she was pretty, with brilliant gray eyes and golden-blond hair that swung smoothly to her shoulders, from the photographs in the file he had assembled on her. He just hadn’t realized how damn fetching she was.
He slanted another glance at her, this time one of pure male assessment. She was of average height, maybe, though a little more slender than he liked, almost delicate. Almost. The muscles of her bare arms, revealed by a white sleeveless blouse, were well-toned and lightly tanned, as if she worked out. A good agent always stayed in good physical condition, so he had to expect her to be stronger than she looked. Her delicate appearance probably took a lot of people off guard.
She sure as hell had taken Wilkins off guard. Chance had to smother a smile. While Sunny had gone back to her gate to check on the status of her flight, which Chance had arranged to be cancelled, Wilkins had told him how she had swung her carry-on bag at him, one-armed, and that the damn thing had to weigh a ton, because it had almost knocked him off his feet.
By now, Wilkins and the other three, “Ms. Fayne” and the two security “policemen,” would have vanished from the airport. The real airport security had been briefed to stay out of the way, and everything had worked like a charm, though Wilkins had groused at being taken down so roughly. “First that little witch damn near breaks my arm with that bag, then you try to break my back,” he’d growled, while they all laughed at him.
Just what was in that bag, anyway? She had held on to it as if it contained the crown jewels, not letting him carry it even when she was right there with him, and only reluctantly letting him take it to stow in the luggage compartment behind them. He’d been surprised at how heavy it was, too heavy to contain the single change of clothes required by an overnight trip, even with a vast array of makeup and a hairdryer thrown in for good measure. The bag had to weigh a good fifty pounds, maybe more. Well, he would find out soon enough what was in it.
“What were you going to do with that guy if you’d caught him?” he asked in a lazy tone, partly to keep her talking, establishing a link between them, and partly because he was curious. She had been chasing after Wilkins with a fiercely determined expression on her face, so determined that, if Wilkins were still running, she would probably still be chasing him.
“I don’t know,” she said darkly. “I just knew I couldn’t let it happen again.”
“Again?” Damn, was she going to tell him about Chicago?
“Last month, a green-haired cretin snatched my briefcase in the airport in Chicago.” She slapped the arm of the seat. “That’s the first time anything like that has ever happened on one of my jobs, then to have it happen again just a month later—I’d have been fired. Heck, I would fire me, if I were the boss.”
“You didn’t catch the guy in Chicago?”
“No. I was in Baggage Claims, and he just grabbed the briefcase, zipped out the door and was gone.”
“What about security? They didn’t try to catch him?”
She peered at him over the top of the oversize sunglasses. “You’re kidding, right?”
He laughed. “I guess I am.”
“Losing another briefcase would have been a catastrophe, at least to me, and it wouldn’t have done the company any good, either.”
“Do you ever know what’s in the briefcases?”
“No, and I don’t want to. It doesn’t matter. Someone could be sending a pound of salami to their dying uncle Fred, or it could be a billion dollars worth of diamonds—not that I think anyone would ever ship diamonds by a courier service, but you get the idea.”
“What happened when you lost the briefcase in Chicago?”
“My company was out a lot of money—rather, the insurance company was. The customer will probably never use us again, or recommend us.”
“What happened to you? Any disciplinary action?” He knew there hadn’t been.
“No. In a way, I would have felt better if they had at least fined me.”
Damn, she was good, he thought in admiration—either that, or she was telling the truth and hadn’t had anything to do with the incident in Chicago last month. It was possible, he supposed, but irrelevant. Whether or not she’d had anything to do with losing that briefcase, he was grateful it had happened, because otherwise she would never have come to his notice, and he wouldn’t have this lead on Crispin Hauer.
But he didn’t think she was innocent; he thought she was in this up to her pretty neck. She was better than he