Diamond Bay (Page 42)

He levered himself onto his right elbow and looked down at her. Her clear gray eyes were dark with concernfor him, after he’d taken her with all the care and finesse of a bull in rut! There were her soft, trembling lips, but he hadn’t kissed them, nor had he caressed her pretty breasts and sucked them as he’d done in his dreams. Love was in those eyes, love so pure and shining that it knotted his insides with pain and shattered a wall somewhere deep in his mind and soul, leaving him vulnerable in a way he’d never been before.

Now he knew what hell was. Hell was seeing heaven, bright and tender, but being on the outside of the gates, unable to enter them without risking the destruction of what you most treasured.

Chapter Nine

"Just who is this woman Ellis has gone so mad over?" Charles asked calmly, his pale-blue eyes never wavering as he watched Lowell. As always, Charles’s manner was detached, but Lowell knew that he missed nothing.

"She lives in a little house close to the beach. Deserted area, nothing around for miles. We questioned her when we first started looking for Sabin."

"And?" The voice was almost gentle.

Lowell shrugged. "And nothing. She hadn’t seen anything."

"She must be out of the ordinary to capture Ellis’s attention."

After considering it a minute Lowell shook his head. "She’s good-looking, but that’s all. Nothing fancy. No makeup. Outdoorsy type. But Ellis hasn’t stopped talking about her."

"It seems our friend Ellis doesn’t have his mind completely on the job at hand." The comment was deceptively casual.

Again Lowell shrugged. "He thinks Sabin died when the boat blew up, so he’s not putting a lot of effort into hunting him."

"What do you think?"

"It’s a possibility. We haven’t found any trace of him. He was wounded. Even if by a miracle he’d made it to shore, he’d have needed help."

Charles nodded, his eyes thoughtful as he waved Lowell away. He had worked with Lowell for many years now and knew him as a steady and competent, if uninspired, agent. He had to be competent to have survived. Lowell was no more convinced of Sabin’s survival than Ellis was, and Charles wondered if he had allowed Sabin’s reputation to override his own common sense. Common sense would certainly seem to indicate that Sabin had died in the explosion or immediately thereafter, drowning in the warm turquoise waters to become food for the denizens of the sea. No one should have survived that, but Sabin… Sabin was one of a kind, except for that blond devil with the golden eyes, who had disappeared and was rumored to be dead, despite the disquieting talk that had floated out of Costa Rica the year before. Sabin was more shadow than substance, instinctively cunning and damnably lucky. No, not lucky, Charles corrected himself. Skilled. To call Sabin "lucky" was to underestimate him, a fatal mistake too many of his colleagues had made.

"Noelle, come here," he called, barely raising his voice, but he didn’t need to. Noelle was never far from him. It gave him pleasure to look at her, not because she was extraordinarily beautiful, though she was, but because he enjoyed the incongruity of such lethal skill housed in such a lovely woman. Her job was twofold: to protect Charles and to kill Sabin.

Noelle came into the room, walking with the grace of a model, her eyes sleepy and soft. "Yes?"

He waved his thin, elegant hand to indicate a chair. "Sit, please. I have been discussing Sabin with Lowell."

She sat, crossing her legs to best display them. The gestures that attracted unsuspecting males came naturally to her; she had studied and practiced too long for them to be anything else by now. She smiled. "Ah, Agent Lowell. Sturdy, dependable, if a little shortsighted."

"Like Ellis, he seems to think we’re wasting our time in searching for Sabin."

She lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply, then blew smoke through her shapely lips. "It doesn’t matter what they think, does it? Only what you think."

"I wonder if I am bestowing superhuman powers on Sabin, if I’m so wary of him that I can’t accept his death," Charles mused.

Her sleepy eyes blinked. "Until we have proof of his death we can’t afford to assume otherwise. It’s been eight days. If he somehow survived, he would now be recovered enough to start moving around, which should increase our chances of finding him. The most logical thing would be to intensify our search, rather than slacken it."

Yes, that was indeed logical; on the other hand, if Sabin had survived the explosion and somehow made it to shore, something that seemed impossible, why hadn’t he contacted his headquarters for aid? Ellis’ s contact in Washington was completely certain that Sabin hadn’t attempted to get in touch with anyone. That simple fact had convinced almost everyone that Sabin was dead… yet Charles couldn’t convince himself. It was sheer instinct that prompted him to keep his men searching, waiting, poised to strike. He could not believe that it had been so easy to kill Sabin, not after all these years when attempt after attempt had failed. It was impossible to have too much respect for his capabilities. Sabin was out there, somewhere. Charles could feel it.

He was abruptly brisk. "You’re right, of course," he told Noelle. "We will intensify the search, re-cover every inch of ground. Somehow, somewhere, we have missed him."

Sabin prowled the house, his savage mood reflected on his face. He’d done some hard things in his life, but none of them had been as difficult as having to watch Rachel get ready to go out with Tod Ellis. It went against every instinct he had, but nothing he’d said could change her mind, and he was helpless, handcuffed by circumstance. He couldn’t afford to do anything that would focus attention on her; it would merely increase the danger she was in. If he’d been ready to move he would have gone that night rather than expose her to Ellis, but again he was stymied. He wasn’t ready to move, and to move before he was prepared could mean the difference between success and failure, with his country’s security at stake. He’d been trained for half his lifetime to put his country first, even at the cost of his own life. Sabin could have sacrificed himself without hesitation or even regret if it had been necessary, but the simple, terrible truth was that he couldn’t sacrifice Rachel.