Chisinau, Moldova
Thirteen hours later…
As the private jet taxied toward a slightly dilapidated-looking hangar, Angel turned his attention from the drab scenery slipping past his window to Sonya. She sat on a plush leather sofa on the opposite side of the fuselage. It hadn’t escaped his attention that she had carefully avoided making eye contact with him throughout the flight.
Last night had rattled her.
Good. He didn’t want to be the only one suffering the aftereffects.
She glanced up from the copy of Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms she’d been pretending to read—yes, pretending; she hadn’t turned a page in twenty minutes—to find him staring at her. Good manners dictated he look away.
Fuck good manners.
Holding her gaze, he let his eyes tell her all the things his mouth couldn’t.
I still want you.
I still love you.
Please trust me.
But she wasn’t a mind reader. Her confused frown said as much. When he continued to stare, she swallowed and shifted uncomfortably.
What? she mouthed, her delicately arched eyebrows pinching.
Becky, the lead motorcycle designer at Black Knights Inc., had once told Angel he had the look of a predator. “All piercing eyes and sharp focus.” He hadn’t told Becky at the time, but the truth was that he was a predator. The Mossad had trained him to be. Trained him to carry out vicious acts in the name of protecting innocents, his homeland, and all of Western civilization.
He tried to soften his gaze now, but apparently that didn’t work. Sonya shifted again, and a blush spread down her throat, mottling her décolletage and drawing his eyes to the creamy slopes of her full breasts barely visible above the open neck of her turquoise blouse. The memory of the night before, when he’d palmed one of those delicious mounds—and a hundred memories of a decade ago when he’d tongued them and kissed them—swirled through his mind.
He was good at hiding his feelings. Better than good, he was great. But some of what he thought must have registered on his face. Sonya blew out a ragged breath, her pulse hammering heavily in her neck. What? she mouthed again, this time hardening her jaw.
He could have held his tongue. He probably should have held his tongue. But considering there were a million things he wanted to tell her and couldn’t, this one truth seemed harmless.
And necessary.
He didn’t want there to be any confusion that he wanted her. That he meant to have her. That he would have her.
He mouthed, Thinking about last night.
She caught her bottom lip between her teeth and slid a tentative glance toward Grafton. The sack of shit was too busy making his way through the current issue of the London Times to pay them any mind.
When she looked back at Angel, she shook her head.
He didn’t know if she was telling him not to think about last night or not to mention last night. He cocked his head, ready to mouth why, but the plane taxied into the hangar and the cabin’s interior was thrown into shadow.
Grafton lowered his paper and blinked owlishly against the gloom before the pilot flipped on the interior lights. “Well, that was a ruddy fast flight,” he muttered.
“Too fast,” Sonya agreed, marking her spot in the book with a length of hot-pink ribbon that reminded Angel of her painted toenails. Then she unlatched her seat belt and reached beneath the sofa for her leather purse. Her jerky movements attested to her jitters as she stuffed the book inside her handbag.
Angel knew it was no longer him making her nervous. It was what they were poised to do here in Moldova.
When the plane came to a stop, the three hulking No-Necks who’d been seated at the back made their way down the aisle to the front. Combined, they smelled like a men’s locker room. It was all BO and body spray, deodorant and old sneakers. They each carried a black nylon duffel filled with… Angel tilted his head and narrowed his eyes, taking in the smooth sides of the bags and the telltale sharp edges poking against their ends.
Filled with cash, he decided. He’d done plenty of money drops over the years. He recognized the size and shape of a bag full of…as the Wu-Tang Clan and Ozzie, BKI’s onsite computer whiz, would say…dolla, dolla bills, y’all.
Although, in this case it was probably euros or British pounds.
The pilot, a middle-aged man with a robust midsection that said he’d had a lifelong love affair with all things deep-fried, emerged from the cockpit and lowered the private plane’s door. As soon as he did, the smell of jet fuel and damp concrete drifted into the fuselage.
