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The Medusa Proposition

Cindy Dees

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

About the Author

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Copyright

About the Author

CINDY DEES started flying aeroplanes while sitting in her dad’s lap at the age of three and got a pilot’s license before she got a driver’s license. At age fifteen, she dropped out of high school and left the horse farm in Michigan where she grew up to attend the University of Michigan.

After earning a degree in Russian and East European Studies, she joined the US Air Force and became the youngest female pilot in its history. She flew supersonic jets, VIP airlift and the C-5 Galaxy, the world’s largest airplane. She also worked part-time gathering intelligence. During her military career, she traveled to forty countries on five continents, was detained by the KGB and East German secret police, got shot at, flew in the first Gulf War, met her husband and amassed a lifetime’s worth of war stories.

Her hobbies include professional Middle Eastern dancing, Japanese gardening and medieval re-enacting. She started writing on a one-dollar bet with her mother and was thrilled to win that bet with the publication of her first book in 2001. She loves to hear from readers and can be contacted at www.cindydees.com.

Dear Reader,

I always look forward to starting a new Medusa book because they’re personal favorites of mine. But I have to say this one was extra special fun, because it marks the beginning of a whole new Medusa team! Never fear, though. All of your favorite original Medusas will still show up from time to time to help save the world and show the boys how it’s done.

The Medusa Proposition launches the stories of another feisty and talented group of ladies out to kick butt and make the world a better place … oh, and maybe find themselves a smokin’ hot hunk along the way. This set of Medusas brings a broad array of skills to the game that will make the capabilities of the Medusa Project just that much more exciting.

We begin with Paige Ellis who’s looking to take her life in a new direction. And boy does she ever when she bumps into Thomas Rowe. These two are gasoline and fire from the moment they meet. So buckle your seat belt and get ready for a wild ride as the Medusas storm back into action bigger and better than ever!

Happy reading,

Cindy Dees

Chapter 1

Paige Ellis stared grimly at the gray turmoil of the ocean below. How was it the sea always so accurately reflected her mood? The weathered Adirondack chair beneath her was cold and hard, and somehow that was fitting, too. No comfort for her, no, sir.

Guilt writhed in her gut like a serpent, eating at her from the inside out. Not many television news journalists could lay claim to having single-handedly gotten their cameraman/best buddy/sometimes lover killed. Oh, sure, she hadn’t technically come right out and asked him to try to track down that extremist group to set up an interview for her. But she’d darn well hinted around that it would mean the world to her if he could pull it off. She might not have killed Jerry outright, but his blood was on her hands, nonetheless.

Other people had argued that he should’ve known better, that he knew what he’d been getting into, that he was too much of a risk taker, and it had finally caught up with him. But her sense of responsibility was too deeply ingrained for her to let it go that easily.

She ought to throw herself over the cliff into the icy embrace of the sea and just let it take her. Except the fall was probably only about fifty feet and she doubted it would kill her. And even if it did, a cold, quick death was better than she deserved—

“Paige! Phone!”

Her father’s voice jerked her out of her dark thoughts. “I’m not taking any calls!”

Uh-oh. He was striding across the backyard with that Ellis jaw-jut going full force. “You need to take this one.” He shoved the handset at her.

“Who is it?” She didn’t reach for the phone. She wasn’t kidding. She really didn’t want to talk to anyone. Not to nosy reporters trying to find out how one of their own died, not to her boss at the TV network, and most certainly not to anyone who would attempt to talk her out of her self-recriminations yet again.

“Find out for yourself.” Her father dropped the phone in her lap and stalked off.

Sheesh. What had his knickers in such a twist? She picked up the phone cautiously. “Hello?”

“Hello, Paige. My name’s Vanessa Blake.”

“Do I know you?”

“Not yet. But I’d like to meet you. I have a proposition for you. One you’re going to find very interesting if I haven’t misjudged you.”

“Is this a sales call?” She was going to kill her father. “I’m so not interested in a time-share, or an overseas investment opportunity or in opening a mutual-fund account.”

The woman at the other end of the line laughed in what sounded like genuine amusement. “Good. Neither am I. I work for the U.S. government. What I want to talk with you about is classified. Highly classified. Is there somewhere we can meet? I’ll come to Maine if you’d like, or you can come to North Carolina to see me. Or, of course, we can meet halfway, say in Washington, D.C.? Neutral ground for both of us?”

Interest flared in Paige’s gut. She smelled a juicy story. Particularly when this woman very smoothly wasn’t taking no for an answer. Paige knew the technique well. She used it all the time herself to wrangle interviews out of people. A little flustered at being on the receiving end of her own bulldozer tactics, she belatedly answered, “I’d rather go to D.C.”

Her parents’ beach house was sacred. It was her final sanctuary, her last line of retreat from everything and everyone. Besides, if she was going to take control of the meeting with this Blake person, she might as well put the woman at ease. Let her think she was safe, get her to let her guard down.

Ms. Blake was speaking again. “I’ll have a plane waiting for you in Bangor in four hours. I’ll arrange your hotel in Washington tonight, and we can meet first thing tomorrow morning. Oh, and bring your passport. I’ll take care of everything else.” The line went dead.

Paige stared in disbelief. That woman wasn’t a bulldozer. She was an industrial-size steamroller! And four hours? It was nearly a three-hour drive to Bangor, and she’d still need to pack. Paige jumped to her feet and hurried to the house.

The plane turned out to be an unmarked Learjet that whisked her down the coast to Dulles International Airport. Dusk was falling on the nation’s capitol as a similarly innocuous SUV met her at the plane and drove her to an understated hotel in Alexandria’s Old Town neighborhood. It was the kind of place high-profile politicians might use to meet their mistresses or maybe meet a journalist on the sly. After all, the fine art of the news leak was alive and well in this city.

Who was Vanessa Blake?

In the last few minutes before she’d had to leave for Bangor International Airport, Paige had frantically researched her on the Internet and came up with absolutely nothing. In some ways, that was more telling than finding out the woman’s life history. As far as Paige could tell after Net surfing high and low, nobody anywhere believed a Vanessa Blake in government service in North Carolina existed. Either the name was an alias or this woman worked in the intelligence community. Deep inside the intelligence community.

Paige’s interest was piqued. How could it not be? To quote Crocodile Dundee, she was a reporter and a woman, and that made her the nosiest person on the planet.

A call from the hotel phone on the nightstand woke her up the next morning, and no surprise, the caller was Vanessa Blake. “Good morning, Paige. I hope I didn’t wake you up.”

“No, of course not.” God, she hoped she didn’t sound half-asleep.

“I’ll be downstairs in Private Dining Room B in a half hour. How do you like your eggs?”

“Uh, sunny-side up with a side of bacon. Toast and grapefruit juice while you’re at it, please.”

“I’ll see you in thirty minutes.”

In spite of herself, Paige was a little intimidated. She didn’t want to be late and put herself at an even bigger disadvantage. She hustled through a shower, grateful that her strawberry-blond hair needed only a quick hit from the blow-dryer to be wavy and lush around her face. She tossed on a little makeup and leaped into clothes with two minutes to spare. Thankfully, she didn’t have to wait long for an elevator and strolled into the private dining room exactly on time per Vanessa’s phone call, looking as cool and composed as could be.

Vanessa Blake looked to be in her mid-thirties. She was pretty, but not someone who would turn heads in a crowd. In fact, intuition told Paige that this woman worked to underplay her good looks most of the time. She didn’t carry herself like a law-enforcement type. Not FBI, then. CIA, maybe? Paige’s pulse jumped a little. When news stories came out of Langley, they were usually juicy.

Her quiet hostess seemed content to let Paige eat in peace, and the meal passed without any stunning revelations. Finally, Vanessa laid down her fork and linen napkin. Showtime. Paige leaned back casually, as if her every sense wasn’t on the high alert that it was.

“For the record, Paige, I have an electronic jamming device in my purse that will prevent all listening devices from penetrating this room. It also will scramble any recording you try to make of this conversation.”

That sent Paige’s brows skyward. She replied, “If we’re going to speak strictly off the record, then what is the point of this meeting? I have to be allowed to report the story.”

Vanessa smiled. “I’m not speaking to you in your capacity as a journalist. I’m interested in you for another purpose altogether.”

Okay, now she was confused. Where was this woman taking this? Was she being recruited to work for the CIA? Holy cow. Time to take the offensive. Aloud she asked, “Why me?”

“You fit my criteria … and very, very few women in this country achieve that,” her cryptic companion replied.

Paige frowned. “I beg your pardon? What criteria?”

“You’re smart. You’re resourceful. You’re an outside-the-box thinker. You’re reasonably physically fit—although I’ll improve on that quite a bit before it’s all said and done. Your career puts you in a position to be extraordinarily useful to me because you can plausibly go places that most people aren’t allowed to go.”

Uh-huh. Recruiting me to be a spy.

Vanessa leaned forward and looked Paige square in the eye. “But most of all, you’re motivated. You have a powerful and personal reason for accepting the offer I’m about to make you.”

“And what is that reason?” Paige asked, vaguely alarmed now. Did this woman actually think she could blackmail a high-profile journalist into working for her?

“Jerry Sprague. Your cameraman, and if I don’t miss my guess, significant other.”

Paige involuntarily lurched back from the table.

Vanessa’s gaze held hers forcefully, but her quiet voice continued inexorably. “The real story of what happened to Jerry Sprague. Not the sanitized one that was fed to the public, and to his family for that matter.”

It was Paige’s turn to stare aggressively. “How exactly do you know the real story?”

Vanessa didn’t answer directly. But what she did say stunned Paige into frozen horror.

“Please allow me to express my condolences on your loss. Sprague was a good man, and that was an awful way for him to die. If I don’t miss my guess a second time, you’re hauling around a nearly unbearable burden of guilt at the moment.” She paused and then added lightly, “I thought you might be interested in getting a little payback against the forces that did something like that to a friend and lover.”

How on God’s green Earth did this woman know she and Jerry had been occasional lovers? They’d been extremely discreet about their off-camera relationship. The network didn’t even have any idea of it. Paige blurted, “Who are you to presume to know how I feel about Jerry’s death?”

An infinite well of sadness and knowing filled Vanessa’s gaze. Paige’s anger dissolved abruptly in the face of this woman’s compassion. Vanessa murmured, “You’re not the only person in the world who’s been touched by evil. Who’s seen death. The only difference between you and me, Paige, is that you point cameras at it and I do something about it. Today, I’m offering you the chance to quit being merely an observer and take action.”

“Who are you?” Paige demanded. She was startled to register something already unfolding in her gut in response to this woman’s words. Whether it was yearning for redemption or simple hope that it was possible to act against the badness in the world, she couldn’t tell. She just knew that all of a sudden, this woman had her complete, undivided attention.

“Let me properly introduce myself. I am Major Vanessa Blake of the U.S. Army, Team Leader of the Medusa Project.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Good. If you had, I’d have to shoot you.”

Paige blinked. From the deadpan way the major said that, she wasn’t entirely sure the woman was kidding.

“I have a proposition for you, Miss Ellis.”

Chapter 2

Two years later

Breathing deeply, Paige lengthened her stride to a full-out run. Funny how running so often hurt so much, but every now and then it was like this. Exhilarating. Powerful. Free. The beach sand had just the right give beneath her bare feet, and the waves crashing beside her were as wild and untamed as she felt. The jungle on her other side was thick and mysterious in the pale light of dawn.

Maybe it was because she was so wrapped up in her runner’s high that she didn’t spot the dark lump on the shore ahead of her until she was nearly on top of it. Her initial impulse was to swerve and continue around it. But something about the size and shape of the sodden canvas bag set off warning bells in the back of her mind. If she’d learned anything in her long months of Special Forces training with the all-female team of soldiers known as the Medusas, it was to listen to her gut. And her gut said something wasn’t right about that sack.

She slowed. Walked cautiously the last few paces to the bag. It was big, easily four feet long, and stuffed with something bulky and irregular. The drawstring that held it shut was swollen and stiff with salt water in addition to being heavily knotted. Paige pulled her switchblade out of the concealed sheath sewn into her running shorts and sawed at the tough rope until it popped free. Good thing it was Medusa policy never to go anywhere completely unarmed.

Her nose twitched. The rotting seaweed smell rising from the bag held another subtle note … something foul that made her gut roil ominously. Carefully, she pulled the neck of the sack open. Peeked inside.

She spun away as vomit hurled up and out of her throat explosively. She fell to all fours on the sand beside the bag, her back arched like a cat’s, and emptied her gut. Remnants of bile burned like acid in the back of her throat, tasting so terrible that she retched again. But there was nothing left to heave this time.

Sonofa—

It was one thing to see a dead body. Lord knew she’d done enough of that in her years as a foreign war correspondent. But it was another thing entirely to see the dismembered, partially decomposed remains of someone you knew. She knew that one firsthand, too.

Shaking off the memory of her old cameraman’s mutilated corpse in a military morgue, Paige glanced down at the canvas bag at her feet. It smelled of salt and seaweed—and rotten death. She knew that smell, too, thanks to Jerry.

Nobody’d blamed her when she’d decided to take extra time off and drop out of sight after Jerry’s death. There’d been some murmurs about the nearly two years she was gone. But her cameraman’s death had been a shock, after all, and rumors persisted that she’d been involved in it somehow. Thankfully, the worst of the rumors had been long forgotten by the time she finally showed up on her old network’s doorstep again, leaner and noticeably fitter with an imminently more self-contained look in her eyes than before, asking to go back to work—the more dangerous the locale, the better.

A cold wave washed over her ankles, startling her into jumping back hard. The canvas bag containing the dead man rocked as the water receded. She grabbed the sack and dragged it higher up the beach.

The dead man had a name. Takashi Ando. He’d gone missing forty-eight hours ago, although the Japanese government was downplaying it, claiming he’d gone on a short vacation before the economic summit formally commenced. He was a ridiculously wealthy businessman, and it was fully possible he’d jetted off for a day or two of fun in the sun before attending this important global economic conference. Officially, Paige was here as a journalist to cover the meetings.

Unofficially—well, that was another story.

Paige reached reluctantly for the cell phone in her hip pocket. Her fingers paused over the numbers. Who to call? Greer Carson, her boss at the news network? Or her other bosses? The secret ones nobody knew about?

She’d get all kinds of attention for breaking the big story of the summit. Two years ago, she’d have made the call to the newsroom in a heartbeat. But now …

… now she was less interested in fame. Much more interested in the larger consequences of the news she covered. The network execs would splash the death of the Japanese delegation chief all over the news, and it would rock the core of the summit, if not cause various key parties to withdraw their delegations and go home. Exactly the kind of reaction her other bosses were hoping to avoid.

She sighed. Vanessa had warned her that she would face constant conflicts of interest if she tried to be both a credible journalist and a Medusa. And she’d naively vowed that there was no conflict. That her loyalties were clear. The Medusas first. Her career second.

After all, she’d had plenty of opportunity to expose the Medusa Project to the world and she hadn’t. Even she had to admit she’d probably get a Pulitzer if she wrote the story of women in the Special Forces. But puh-lease. No way would she go through the rigors of army basic training, continue to work her butt off for another year, then sweat, claw and bleed her way through Medusa indoctrination, just to get a story. Nobody was that big of a masochist.

Paige stared down at the bag at her feet. She’d spent her entire career standing back from events like this, detached and objective, merely observing the casual atrocities taking place around her. But she’d never done a damned thing. Oh, sure, she’d felt her share of moral outrage along the way. But she’d never acted on it. Not until now.

Now she was a soldier. A Special Forces operator with the capacity and duty to respond to the murder of a famous, important man. Shockingly, she realized that her careless detachment was gone. Gone, too, was her reporter’s jaded eye. This was her turf. Her summit to protect. And someone had died on her watch. It felt good to be angry, good to know she could act to right this wrong. And in the meantime, she’d show them all that she belonged in the Medusa Project.

Resolutely, she dialed her phone. “Viper, it’s Fire Ant.” The original Medusa squad all took nicknames of dangerous snakes. Her training group of Medusas had elected to give themselves field handles of dangerous insects. Vanessa Blake was Viper, and Paige had been dubbed Fire Ant in honor of her reporter’s sharp bite. Her reddish blond hair probably had something to do with it, too.

“What’s up?” Vanessa asked briskly.

She thought she detected sleep in Vanessa’s voice, but phone calls at weird hours came with the job. She took a deep breath. “I found Takashi Ando.”

“That’s great!”

“Not great. He’s dead.”

Silence greeted that announcement. Then, a terse, “What happened?”

“It’s bad. We’re gonna have to call in the local authorities.”

“Our orders are to keep this summit on track, and the way I see it, Ando’s death has potential to derail the whole thing. Do you concur?”

Paige sighed. “Yes, I concur. The North Koreans are only here because the Chinese twisted their arms. They’re looking for any excuse to pull out. And if any of the South Asian rim nations take their new offshore oil finds and go home, the whole purpose of the summit evaporates.”

“So why do you want to bring in the police?”

Paige winced, but answered evenly enough. “To catch Ando’s killer, maybe? He was murdered.”

A long silence greeted that announcement. Paige was always fascinated to hear what Vanessa came up with when she started thinking hard. But in this case, her commander’s eventual response was only a bland question. “How did he die?”

“Don’t know. I found his body washed up on the beach in a bag. In pieces.”

Another long silence. “Where are you?”

“I’m on the west shore of the island about four miles north of the hotel strip.” The summit was being held on Beau Mer, a resort island smack-dab in the middle of French Polynesia. Neutral territory for all the interested parties. She glanced down at the bag on the sand. Not so neutral after all.

Vanessa announced, “I’m calling in some backup for you.”

Paige’s impulse was to protest. To argue that she didn’t need help. That she could handle this alone. Except, it would be a lie. A dismembered corpse lay at her feet. And she frankly didn’t know what to do next. A niggling feeling that she was missing something important plagued her. It was the same feeling she got when a big story was breaking under her nose and she hadn’t spotted it yet. But what? What was she missing?

Vanessa’s voice interrupted her turbulent thoughts. “The guy I’m going to send you will answer to the name Wolf. Stay put and don’t move Ando.”

Paige snorted. “Takashi isn’t going anywhere.”

“Report to me in an hour.”

Paige disconnected the call and stared glumly down at the gray-green bag. She became aware of fine tremors passing through her body, like aftershocks of a major earthquake. “Who did this to you, Mr. Ando? And why?”

You’re an investigative reporter, Einstein. How would you investigate this thing?

She’d try to track his movements for the last few days of his life. Find out who he’d met with. Called. E-mailed. She’d poke into his past. Into his business dealings. Look for enemies who wanted to see Ando dead. She’d check out everyone who wanted to see this summit fail. Of course, that wasn’t much of a stretch to figure out. Neither the North Koreans nor the Russians were thrilled to be here. And either group had the resources, resolve and mind-set to kill someone if that was what it took to put an end to the summit.

Paige started as the sound of an engine disturbed the rhythmic whooshing of the waves. Far down the beach, a speck was racing toward her. She glanced around quickly. No time to hide the body. She could push it in the water but might risk losing it in the capricious tides. Subterfuge, then. Quickly, she bent down and pulled shut the neck of the sodden canvas bag. Scuba gear. She’d claim it was diving equipment in her bag and she was waiting for a friend to pick her up.

She was surprised when her nerves calmed and her body fell into a state of relaxed readiness. Wow. All that training from the Medusas must have worked. Certainty that she could handle whatever happened in the next few minutes flowed through her. She’d feel better if she had an assault rifle in her back pocket, though. She made a mental note to carry a firearm from now on when she went for her morning runs.

The speck resolved itself into a blob of yellow, and then into a four-wheeled, all-terrain vehicle. Driven by a man. A holy-moly, ay Chihuahua, gorgeous man. Although his hair was dark, slicked back like he’d been swimming recently, and his eyes were dark as well, he looked Caucasian. Just with a really good tan.

A pair of surfboards stood upright in the passenger seat beside him. He wore a baggy pair of swim trunks that did nothing to disguise the sculpted power of his legs and showed off a tanned, muscular chest that frankly made her want to fan herself. Even his bare feet were sexy as he grabbed the roll bar over his head and swung athletically out of the vehicle.

He frowned as he looked at her. “There must be some mistake. I’m supposed to meet a guy called Fire Ant out here this morning. But you’re obviously not him.”

Paige grinned. It was an honored Medusa tradition to mess with male operators and fail to mention that the Medusas were women. She replied cautiously. “You Wolf?”

“Who’s asking?” he replied tersely, all traces of the casual surfer dude abruptly gone.

Ah, the joys of special operators dancing carefully around each other, afraid to blow their covers. She said quietly, “I’m Fire Ant.”

His frown intensified. “Come again?”

“I’m Fire Ant.”

“Sonofa—” He broke off. “Yeah, I’m Wolf.” He nodded at the canvas bag. “That your gear?”

“No. That’s the problem you’re here to help me with.” “What’s in it?”

“A dead man.” She watched carefully to gauge his reaction to the announcement. Interestingly enough, his expression barely flickered. Was he used to being around dead people or was he just extraordinarily self-controlled?

“What do you want me to do with him?” Wolf asked.

“Help me hide him until the right people can come and claim his body.”

He took that news calmly enough. “Who is it?”

Interesting that he should assume she knew the dead man. But then, what other explanation was there for why she’d want to hide the body? She hesitated to tell this guy the dead man’s identity. After all, she didn’t have any idea who he really was.

She shrugged.

He studied her all too perceptively. If she read him right, he didn’t buy for a minute the idea that she didn’t know the dead man. For all she knew, he might suspect she’d been the one to off the victim.

Wolf asked casually, “Any sign of chains or weights in or on the bag?”

“I dunno. I didn’t look yet.” Not to mention she hadn’t thought of it. She clamped down on the chagrin bubbling up in her gut.

“Help me check.”

They squatted in the sand near the bag and examined its exterior surface for tears, holes or other signs of attempts to weigh it down. The smell was worse this close to it. Paige held her facial expression perfectly still, particularly after she caught Wolf’s sidelong gaze on her.

She leaned back on her heels. “I don’t see any signs from the outside.”

“Me, neither. Let’s open it up, then.”

She clenched her jaw but held her position resolutely.

Her companion swore under his breath when he got his first look at the dead man and the condition he was in. Then he breathed, “Ando.”

So. Wolf was familiar with the attendees at the upcoming summit … or else he was conversant with Japanese businessmen and could recognize them on sight, even while dead and starting to bloat.

He commented, “Doesn’t look like any fish have been nibbling on him. Which means he was bagged before he went in the water.”

Wolf reached into the bag and around in the various—appendages—while Paige’s gaze slid away.

He rinsed his hand in the surf as he announced, “Nothing obvious in the bag with our guy. Odd. Who’d ditch a body and not weigh it down?”

Her gaze snapped back to him and she blurted, “Someone who wanted it found, obviously.”

He stared at her speculatively for several seconds. “Grab the bag,” he abruptly ordered.

She blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“Help me lift your guy into my ATV.”

Distastefully, she grabbed the wet canvas and, between the two of them, they heaved the wet sack onto the back of the vehicle. It landed with a sickening thud. Trying to hide her involuntary shudders, she helped Wolf lash the surfboards across the spare tire mounted on the back of the vehicle. The guy knew his way around ropes and knots. But then, so did she.

He swept his arm toward the passenger seat in invitation. As she climbed in, she asked, “What do you suggest we do with him?”

“Put him on ice.”

She frowned over at her companion as he started the engine.

“Literally?”

“Yeah. Unless you want me to help you bury him. Can’t leave a body out in this heat and humidity for more than a few hours for obvious reasons.”

He flashed her a grin and her breath caught in surprise. Whoa. In the television business, that was known as flesh impact. Normal people might call him charismatic. She’d call him a walking advertisement for raw sex.

She mumbled, “The idea is to conceal his death until the summit is well underway. It starts tomorrow. We’re only looking at a day or two. Just until someone can get here quietly to take his body home. His family deserves to get his remains.”

“Where are you staying?” he asked.