Buch lesen: «My Spy»

“I’m here to rescue you.”

His hands were tightly closed around her wrists, where they would remain until he was confident that she wasn’t going to take a swing at him.

For a moment, still sprawled on top of him, Pru wavered. Was she being rescued? And then suspicion crept in between the lines. “Where are the others?”

“There are no others,” Joshua told her.

Her eyes widened. “You’re it?”

“Yup. Lucky me. Not that I wouldn’t find this position interesting at any other time.” He opened his hands, releasing her wrists. “But I think we’d better get out of here before one of those Neanderthals comes to investigate.”

Pru scrambled to her feet, managing to have more than just marginal contact with all parts of him. “Just who the hell are you?” she demanded hotly, her cheeks burning.

A smile twisted his lips. “At the moment, I’m your saviour.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

This bestselling and award-winning author has written over one hundred and fifty books for Mills & Boon, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Check out her website at www.MarieFerrarella.com.

Dear Reader,

I don’t know about you, but my favourite stories revolve around the irresistible force meeting the immovable object: two equally stubborn, independent people who discover that there is no weakness to letting another person into their worlds. In this case, the prime minister’s daughter, known in the tabloids as “Pru the Shrew,” has met her match in Joshua, the hunky special agent who has been sent to rescue her from her kidnappers. I knew there were going to be fireworks before I ever started writing about them.

This book marks the beginning of a miniseries involving the organisation that was first introduced in the CAPTURING THE CROWN series. The Lazlo Group is a highly secretive, extremely efficient organisation of handpicked operatives who always get the job done, no matter what it might be. I had a ball writing this, and I hope you have as much fun reading it.

As always, I thank you for reading and I wish you love,

Marie Ferrarella

My Spy

MARIE FERRARELLA

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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To Jenny and John Cho. If you love each other, all the rest will work itself out. Have a wonderful life!

Chapter 1

The silence in his bedroom was eerie, enveloping him like a black embrace. He sat there for a moment, listening to the sound of his own heartbeat. The sound of his own breathing.

It wasn’t often that he woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. Sweat was for people who had things to lose. Home, family, possessions they treasured, a reputation they couldn’t rebuild. But Corbett Lazlo had long since left all of that behind.

There were no ties.

In general, he spent most of his time in the offices of the organization he had created fourteen years ago and presided over like a benevolent god. For the most part, although there were flesh-and-blood people who shared his last name, his organization was his family, his child.

But even that, although he took pride in it, was expendable.

Long ago he’d learned that nothing was permanent, that no one thing could actually be thought of as his lifeline to the world. He did not allow himself to indulge in the emotions that both plagued and regaled other men. Emotions, he firmly believed, more often than not could spell a man’s downfall.

The way his had almost destroyed him.

It was a dream of Cassandra that had him bolting upright in his solitary bed, perspiring when the temperature in his current Paris apartment was kept a constant sixty-seven degrees. Not really a dream, more like a fragment of a memory, delivered to him across the rough sea of time. Cassandra, beckoning to him, devouring him. Honey-haired, green-eyed Cassandra, as young, as beautiful, as seductive as the first moment he laid eyes on her.

And just as evil.

There’d been a glint in her eyes, a murderous glint just as her embrace tightened, a fraction of a second before her mouth came down on his, that warned him of what was to come.

Of death if he didn’t flee.

Corbett sat up in his bed for a moment, his black silk sheets cool against his hot skin. He dragged a hand through his silver hair, slowly drawing air back into his lungs.

The memory…a warning?

A premonition?

He had not remained alive in this precarious, constant high-stakes, cat-and-mouse existence by ignoring his gut instinct. Just because he’d been asleep was no reason to doubt that something was reaching out to him, trying to warn him.

But about what?

Cassandra DuMont was long in his past. The daughter of a cold-blooded, heartless man, Maximilian DuMont, who had been the head of an organization that went to the highest bidder, no task too loathsome, no moral line left uncrossed. The agents at MI-6 had referred to it as Snake, but that was an inside joke. The organization had no name. It was evil, undefined.

There’d been a brother, too. Apollo. Groomed to take over his father’s place when the time came. Dead by his hand, Corbett thought. Cassandra hadn’t known that when she’d made love with him. If she had, she would have tried to slit his throat. And he would have been forced to slit hers.

Instead of sparing her the way he had.

He’d been soft then. And naive. Believing in justice, truth and all the hype he’d been sold when he was first inducted into Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service—S.I.S., formerly MI-6. He and his comrades were protectors of the realm. He’d be lieved that they would stand by him and he by them.

Until the allegations came.

And then, suddenly, he was alone. Watching his entire world, his carefully crafted career, crash and burn. They’d called him a double agent and said they had the evidence to prove it.

The stillness continued.

Corbett took a long breath, as if the air in his lungs would place that period of time even further from him than the actual years did.

Before he could mount a defense, he was swiftly brought up on charges of treason and convicted on the basis of fabricated evidence. His father, a former Hungarian refugee who’d risen to some prominence in Parliament, turned from him, calling him a disgrace even though the old man had never wanted him to be part of S.I.S. in the first place. The words that cut deepest were the ones he’d heard from his mother, saying she was ashamed of him.

And then, out of the blue, Edward, his womanizing older brother, came to his rescue, providing money that allowed Adam Sinclair, Corbett’s best friend and right-hand man, to bribe enough guards to bring about Corbett’s escape from prison. There was no love lost between the brothers, but Edward said he knew Corbett to be a loyal man and loyal men did not sell out their country.

The words, more than the money, forever placed him in Edward’s debt. And, somewhat ironically, Edward had become the financial handler for the Lazlo Group.

With Adam, Corbett had fled the country, coming to France. When he’d created the Lazlo Group, Adam was the first agent he recruited to join. Together, they oversaw the labor pains of its concrete formation. But if asked, Adam always gave him the credit for the group’s inception. It was the Lazlo Group, not the Lazlo–Sinclair Group.

Originally, the agency had been created as a means to prove Corbett’s innocence. His intention was to discover who had planted all the damning evidence against him. But even now, more than a decade later, he still had no answers.

He had, however, managed—thanks to the advances in forensic science and the introduction of DNA as a tool—to prove that he had never betrayed his country.

Apologies were issued. The S.I.S., saying all was forgiven, wanted him back. But he hadn’t wanted it back. Because all was not forgiven, as far as he was concerned.

These days, he had little time to pursue a trail that was close to seventeen years cold. The Lazlo Group had grown from two to more than fifty. It was now an international team of highly trained agents with a myriad of talents and skills, not the least of which was discretion. Corbett’s nephew, Edward’s son Joshua, had surprised Corbett by becoming one of his best agents.

The Group was also perhaps the best-kept secret in the free world among the upper rungs of governments. Usually called in as a last resort, or when a situation was of such a delicate, discreet nature that no one else could be trusted to handle it, the ever-growing organization had more work than it knew what to do with. Consequently, there was no time to investigate a personal wrong done to him so many years ago.

But he would eventually solve the puzzle, Corbett promised himself. He didn’t believe in loose ends.

Corbett had no idea how long he’d been in his office at the high-tech yet largely inconspicuous Lazlo Group headquarters before he heard the low, melodic sound that indicated he’d received another missive on his computer.

He swung his swivel chair around to face the state-of-the-art machine that Lucia, his wizard of all things computer, had insisted he get, and looked at the flat panel screen.

There was a single sentence on it.

The day of repentance draws near, Lazlo.

The moment he read it, his phone rang. Only a handful of his operatives and a select few heads of state had the direct number to his office. In the case of the latter, the signal was bounced and rerouted to several terminals throughout the world before it finally reached him. Just another device to protect his whereabouts and his people. Trust No One was more than just a once-popular cult saying. It was a credo that kept him alive and strong.

Picking up the receiver, he said, “Lazlo,” in a calm, resonant voice. The same voice that had soothed distraught world leaders when they were confronted with the kidnapping of a loved one. The same voice that promised secrecy and a swift resolution above all else.

There was no hint of the disquiet that currently resided beneath his reserve.

“It’s Henderson.”

After Sinclair, Wallace Henderson was the group’s oldest operative. Even more than Sinclair, Henderson prided himself on remaining unruffled. But Corbett’s trained ear detected a strain in the other man’s voice.

He wasn’t wrong. After a beat, Henderson said, “Lazlo, someone killed Jane Kiley.”

The already military straight posture stiffened even more. Corbett’s hand tightened on the receiver. His words of praise were few and he showed no signs of making emotional connections, but that didn’t change the fact that he was very protective of his people.

“When?” he demanded. “How?”

Henderson recited the bare bones. “An hour ago. Lisbon. Car bomb.”

Henderson’s voice cracked. It wasn’t the result of one agent’s indignation over another’s murder. Corbett knew about his people, knew without being directly informed by the parties involved that Henderson and Kiley had been lovers ever since they’d been partnered on a case a little more than a year ago. They probably thought they were being discreet enough to avoid detection. But few things escaped Corbett’s notice.

“Do we know who?” he asked, already making notes to himself. When it came to keeping track of events, he reverted to paper and pencil. The old way. But this time around, he also didn’t want to use the computer any more than he had to until Lucia took a look at it. There had to be a way to trace the sender of the message.

“No.” Henderson ground out the word, frustration echoing in his voice. “She’d just wrapped up the case you sent her on. The munitions were safely returned to their original owner, as per instruction. She’d had the money wired to the Swiss account and verified the transaction.” One tiny, shaky breath escaped before Henderson regained control. “She was coming home.”

“Find the son of a bitch who did this,” Corbett ordered. There was no emotion in his voice, only volume, but his people understood that was his way of coping. “And bring her back,” he added more quietly.

“But—”

He heard the bewilderment in Henderson’s voice. They both knew what the end result of a car bombing looked like. A charred body at best, a disintegrated one at worst.

“Whatever you can find, Henderson,” Corbett told him, his voice less gruff despite the fact that he was having a difficult time coping with this news. They’d lost only one man on the job since the group came into being. Nathaniel O’Hara had been a demolitions expert trying to disarm a bomb strapped to a man’s chest. Neither the man nor O’Hara made it out of that afternoon alive. But the bomber had been brought down a week later. Corbett had been in on the kill. “I’m sending Taggert to go over the scene.”

He ended the call before Henderson could say anything more. The next moment, he called Taggert with instructions to take the first flight to Lisbon.

After that, he sent for Lucia. He wanted to know where the message on his screen had come from.

The perspiration forming along his hairline did not go unnoticed. There had to be a tie-in between what had happened to Kiley, the message on his screen and his nightmare. He didn’t believe in coincidences, not even when they involved dreams.

Most of the time, Prudence Hill, daughter of the prime minister of England, liked to shake things up. By definition, she was not a creature of habit. However, some things in her life just naturally seemed to fall into a pattern. Barring a monsoon or a pronounced case of the flu, she always jogged first thing in the morning. And her route was always the same.

Unencumbered by bodyguards, which she vehemently refused to live with, she ran clockwise along the oblong perimeter of St. James Park until it eventually fed back to the street she started out on, at which point she’d jog back to her apartment. It was as close to a country setting as she could get in the West End.

Pru preferred running as early as possible, when there were fewer cars out. She was more than a little aware of the irony of attempting to maintain a healthy cardiovascular regimen while breathing in the exhaust fumes being belched out by the many vehicles that sped or crawled along the London streets. But it couldn’t be helped. Since breathing in exhaust was a permanent part of the equation in London whether or not she jogged, she chose to jog.

Perspiration slid down her spine, working its way through her sports bra and turning her baggy T-shirt into an uncomfortable collection of cotton threads that adhered to her body. The air was heavy. The famous runner’s high had found her less than midway through her jog, but it was battling mightily with fatigue because the weather was so oppressive.

Jogging in place, waiting for the light to turn green so she could cross, Pru slipped into her own world. The sense of euphoria she was trying to maintain blended well with the music she was listening to. Consequently, she took no notice of the white van that abruptly stopped less than a foot away from her, didn’t hear the passenger side doors opening and didn’t see the two men dressed in black jerseys, black slacks and ski masks who swiftly leaped out of the vehicle.

Eyes intent on the traffic signal, Pru was completely unaware of the men until the two grabbed her, one from the side, the other from behind, and attempted to drag her into the van.

Startled, Pru reacted instantly. Twisting, she bit the hand that was covering her mouth.

The assailant who was behind her and whose fleshy palm now had an almost perfect impression of her teeth howled in pain. He jerked his hand back, uncovering her mouth.

“She bit me!” he cried, furious. “The damn bitch bit me!”

“Suck it up,” the man to his right snapped.

Pru’s semi-freedom lasted less than half a heart-beat as the other man’s grasp on her tightened. Though she twisted and bucked, it was useless. Within thirty seconds of the initial encounter, she’d been packed away in the rear of the van like baggage. Even before the doors were shut, the vehicle was whisking away in the opposite direction of her apartment.

The only minor triumph she’d attained, other than leaving her mark on the tallest of the three kidnappers, was that she’d managed to drop her MP3 player where they’d grabbed her. It was the only clue she could leave. The player, a gift from her stepmother, had her initials on it.

Now all that had to happen was for the device to remain unnoticed until someone her father sent came along to retrace her steps.

She tried not to think of the odds.

“What do you want?” she demanded, seething.

She was being manhandled and for two cents, given half an opportunity, she would have cut the hearts out of all three of their chests. Her hands were already bound behind her and one of the three men was crouching in front of her, wrapping duct tape around her ankles. She felt like a damned Christmas turkey about to be shoved into the oven.

“For you to shut up!” the assailant she’d bitten snapped.

Before she could retort, the man who’d been binding her feet rose to his knees and pressed a length of gray, sticky duct tape across her mouth. “That should do it,” the man told his companion proudly as he began to rise to his feet.

Before he could, Pru threw her weight forward as she jerked her head down, hitting her forehead against his with all the force she could muster. It was enough to catch him off guard and send him staggering backward. He fell on his butt as he cried out in pain, then began to curse. A hail of expletives rained down on her.

And then a sudden, searing pain exploded not from the initial point of contact on her forehead, but from the back of her skull.

The world went black before she could struggle to hold the smothering blanket at bay.

The last thought Pru had was that she was dead.

Chapter 2

When he wasn’t working, Joshua Lazlo found himself at loose ends. While his professional life was precision personified, his private life was the exact opposite.

He had no doubt that if his uncle Corbett had not plucked him out of the social whirl he had resided in from the tender age of sixteen, making a tentative offer to him to join his “group,” his life would have been a complete and utter shamble. More than likely, he would be well on his way to becoming this generation’s version of his father. Which probably would have been more than his poor mother, Abigail, could stand.

Ambitious, his father, Edward Lazlo, had made a small name for himself in Parliament over the years. He’d made a bigger name for himself among the ladies. A scandalous womanizer, he never allowed the fact that he was married to interfere with his actual life’s ambition: to bed as many women as humanly possible before he died.

Not that there was anything wrong with that, Joshua thought, a half smile playing on his lips as he made his way into the bathroom. Though not exactly an admirable avocation, it did have its merits.

There were, after all, a great many beautiful women in the world.

But the fact that these affairs, after all this time, still bothered his poor mother, despite her rather sad little charade that she was unaware of her husband’s philandering, bothered him in turn. There was no love lost between his father and him.

A man shouldn’t marry if he had no intention of remaining faithful.

Which was why, Joshua reasoned, not for the first time as he stepped into the sleek, black onyx tiled shower stall, he was never going to get married. The world was filled with an endless supply of delightful women with long limbs, soft curves and willing bodies.

And he’d never met one he wanted to spend more than a weekend with.

Joshua turned on the water, moving the lever toward the hot side. It was his day off, but there was no reason to spend it with the scent of Miranda still clinging to his body.

Not unless Miranda was close at hand, he added silently.

When he was on assignment, he could work round the clock. Adrenaline pounding, he needed little to no sleep to keep him going. But on his days off, he changed completely, sleeping in, allowing the sun to rise without him.

He supposed it could be called recharging his batteries. Or viewed as being the sloth he could so easily revert to had his uncle not seen something in him and turned him into a crusader.

Not that they were associated with any specific higher power or world government. The agents who comprised the Lazlo Group were essentially free-lancers. It gave his uncle the privilege of being able to turn down whatever work he didn’t choose to do.

When all was said and done, the causes they took up, the people they aided, could all be found on the side of freedom and democracy.

With the possible exception of the time eighteen months ago when he’d had to save the wife and son of the Chinese ambassador from a radical fringe group of would-be terrorists. It had been touch and go for a harrowing thirty-six hours before he brought them both to safety. Since then an expensive bottle of vintage wine had arrived at his door the first of every month like clockwork.

He liked to think that he had accomplished a bit of détente in rescuing the ambassador’s family. Not to mention sending up the price of vintage wine.

“Maybe you’re not as worthless as the old man says you are,” he murmured under his breath, sticking his head under the steady stream of water and removing the shampoo from his hair.

The old man, of course, was his father, who had never had a good word to say to him from the time when such things had actually mattered. Now, all his father’s disdain meant to Joshua was that he was doing something right with his life. He knew that his father found it particularly galling that he was working with his uncle and that he quietly admired the man. There was no denying that Edward Lazlo was a jealous man, jealous of any attention not sent directly his way.

The pulsating noise slowly wove its way through the sound of the shower’s running water.

Joshua stopped, listening. Shutting off the water, he angled his head to hear better.

Ringing.

It was his cell phone.

The next second, Joshua swiftly left the confines of his shower, marking his path with splotches of water that dripped off his body as he retrieved his phone from the nightstand where he’d left it. Day off or not, he knew better than to ignore the phone when it rang.

He’d had the presence of mind, just before falling into bed last night, to plug the phone in. It was still tethered to his charger.

Joshua didn’t bother disconnecting the device as he picked it up. Flipping the phone open, he pressed it to his ear.

“Lazlo.”

“Where are you?”

The sound of his uncle’s voice took him aback for a second. Ordinarily, the man had one of his people do his calling.

Joshua disconnected the phone from its charger and walked back into the bathroom.

“My place.” Taking a towel from the rack, he began drying himself with one hand. He had a feeling he wasn’t going to be climbing back into the shower. “It’s my day off,” he added needlessly. His uncle was on top of everything that happened or didn’t happen at the agency, but it didn’t hurt to add that little fact in.

“Not anymore.”

The finality of the tone was familiar. Something was up. His uncle didn’t pull strings just to watch people jump.

“I’m listening.”

“If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be working for me,” Corbett replied crisply. “The British prime minister’s daughter is missing. She was apparently kidnapped sometime this morning.”

“Why?”

The question was a spontaneous response to the information. He could think of a lot of other people who would have been easier to kidnap than Prudence Hill. The kidnappers obviously hadn’t realized what they were in for when they took the young woman. The tabloids, who loved to hound people of prominence, to build up and then tear down the same person within the space of a few paragraphs, had dubbed Prime Minister Jeremy Hill’s older daughter “Pru the Shrew.”

According to so-called “friends”—most likely disgruntled hangers-on that she’d had no patience with—Prudence Hill had a waspish disposition and never minced words. Word, among people who supposedly would know about such things, had it that the diplomatic corps would not be calling the prime minister’s daughter any time soon with an invitation to join their ranks.

“You’ll be briefed when you arrive.” Joshua knew that his uncle didn’t believe in saying any more than absolutely necessary over the telephone, even if the lines were secured and tested on a daily basis. “The rest you will find out and cover in the report that you will give to me after you bring the young woman back.”

Complete faith, that was what he liked about his uncle. The man did not waste words, did not heap accolades of any kind for a job well done. Nonetheless, you knew what he thought, knew where you stood with him. In Corbett Lazlo’s case, a simple nod spoke volumes and was all but euphoric for the recipient.

“Yes, sir,” Joshua responded. He finished drying himself and draped the towel haphazardly over the rack then padded back to his bedroom. Time was ticking away.

“There’s a jet waiting for you at the airport. Be there in forty minutes. Murphy is compiling a dossier on the woman for you. It’ll be waiting for you when you get to the airfield.” There was an infinitesimal pause. “I don’t have to tell you to be discreet.”

“No,” Joshua agreed amicably, opening his closet, “you don’t.”

He knew the rules. He was to get in and out without leaving a mark, retrieve the girl and bring her home—alive—as swiftly as possible. To aid him he had complete access to all the latest electronic gadgets and available technology, not to mention the considerable standard resources of the Lazlo Group, both human and otherwise, the caliber of which would have made James Bond salivate had the character actually existed.

In exchange for the faith placed in him and the arsenal at his disposal, he could never protest that an assignment found him at an inconvenient moment, nor that he might need more than the allotted amount of time to arrive at the appointed place. Corbett expected loyalty, compliance and agents who were as close to perfection as humanly possible. For this he paid extremely well. But there were rewards beyond money to garner.

He was just now beginning to find that out, Joshua thought, taking out a casual pair of cream-colored slacks and a navy jacket. A light blue shirt followed, along with whisper small briefs and dark, thin socks. All his clothes were aerodynamically light. You never knew when you had to flee and maximum speed was always good if your vehicle was “accidentally” destroyed.

The satisfaction of a job well done was nothing compared to the slight glimmer of approval occasionally seen in Corbett Lazlo’s eyes. And because he’d found himself such a student of his uncle, Joshua had become acutely attuned to the various nuances in the older man’s voice.

There was something more there now, something that Corbett Lazlo was not saying. Had he been the perfect agent, he would have refrained from asking. But Joshua had not yet completely morphed into a junior version of his uncle and so allowed himself to press the issue a little.

“Is something wrong, Uncle?”

He heard annoyance when his uncle answered. “Other than the fact that the older daughter of one of the most influential men in the entire free world has been kidnapped?”

His uncle made it sound as if that was more than enough reason for him to be troubled and distracted, but Joshua knew better. Very little ruffled Corbett Lazlo and they were in the business of thwarting international kidnappers among other things. There was something more, he’d bet his life on it.

“Other than the fact that the older daughter of one of the most influential men in the entire free world has been kidnapped,” Joshua parroted back, then waited to be filled in.

The pause on the other end of the line made him uneasy. It stretched out until it was as thin as a piano wire.

The feeling did not leave once his uncle began speaking again.

“Jane Kiley’s dead.”

He knew Jane. A small, thin woman with lightning-fast hands, a sharp mind and a smile that rivaled a sunrise. She knew her way around horses and tanks, an odd combination that came in handy. He felt an instant sense of loss. He also sensed that there was more.

“I’m guessing not from natural causes.” It was said for form’s sake. They wouldn’t be talking about it if the causes had been natural.

“There was a car bomb.”

Joshua could feel his gut tightening in sympathetic response. “Part of the case?”

“The case was closed,” Corbett said flatly.

Joshua could hear his uncle weighing his words in the silence that followed. Corbett was known to be closemouthed about almost everything. Information—any information—was released on a need-to-know basis. Even about something like this. Joshua didn’t have to be told that Corbett already had the right people working on this.

“Be careful, Joshua.”

The warning took him aback. That was a first, Joshua thought. His uncle never troubled himself with the risk factors. An assignment was gone over, assessed, then left up to the chosen agent to successfully execute. No mention was ever made of being careful.