Say No More Read online

  She leaned up and pouted down at him, her soft breasts pressing against his chest. “It doesn’t feel like you need time,” she said, slithering out of his grasp and hitching her leg across his hip. “What kind of work has you up so early on a Saturday?”

  He could feel her wet and ready for him, and his hands went to her hips to move her off him. Damn his traitorous body. But then he felt something in the room that was more effective than any cold shower. He never heard her—she was too good for that. But he felt her presence. It was reminiscent of the day she’d recruited him at the Marquis de Carmaux’s party almost two years ago. He hadn’t known her name then. Sometimes he wished he still didn’t. But her appearance was just as effective.

  “Sorry for interrupting playtime,” Eve Winter said, lounging against the bedroom door. “But you’re going to need to leave now.” Eve stared right at the woman, who was frozen with shock.

  “Who the hell are you?” the woman asked.

  “I’m his girlfriend,” Eve said, deadpan.

  The idea was so comical he almost laughed. He didn’t see her often, but she never changed. She was to The Gravediggers what M was to James Bond. She called the shots, and although she technically answered to The Directors, Dante had always felt they were too afraid of her to deny her too often. Eve could be … persuasive.

  She always wore black—this time a slim skirt that ended just above her knees and a form-fitting turtleneck. Her hair was pulled back tightly from her face and hung down her back in a long ponytail. She wore her signature red lipstick and a pair of black stilettos that looked like they could be weapons. Knowing her, they probably were.

  “Maybe you didn’t hear me,” Eve said. “You’ve got five seconds to get out of bed and into the elevator, or I’m going to throw you off the balcony. Then everyone will know you’re not a real blonde.”

  There must have been something in Eve’s expression that made a believer out of the woman, because before Dante knew it, she’d scrambled out of bed, gathered most of her clothes, and was sprinting through the condo to his elevator, not bothering to get dressed first. He heard the ding as the doors slid closed, and then there was nothing but silence.

  “Well,” he said. “I’m sure I’ll be receiving an interesting letter from the condo association. I’m almost positive it’s against the rules to run through the building naked.”

  Eve shrugged. “She’s gone, isn’t she? I believe that’s what you wanted.”

  “And how the bloody hell would you know that?” he asked, rolling out of bed and heading into the bathroom so he could get dressed.

  The black bathroom floor tiles were broken up by smaller bronze tiles, and the pattern continued into the large walk-in shower and around the sunken jetted tub. For a touch of irony, the Degas of the bathing nude that Dante had stolen the night he died was displayed over the tub.

  He hadn’t expected Eve to give him privacy, and she proved him right by following him. With any other woman, he would’ve preserved some modesty and shown basic manners. With Eve, he knew the effort would be wasted.

  “Doesn’t it get old?” she asked. “Fucking these bleached-blond wannabes and knowing they’ll never measure up?”

  He shot her a seething look before spitting toothpaste into the sink and rinsing his mouth.

  “You’re all heart, Eve,” he said. “Do you have any feelings at all, or are you a robot?”

  “What place do feelings have in our lives?” she asked, arching a perfect brow. “You’ve been in the game a long time. Do you think we can do the things we do and see the things we see, and go home with a conscience at night?”

  “And yet, Elias and Deacon are curled up beside their women tonight,” he said, not bothering to hide the bitterness. He turned on the shower and decided he needed a few minutes alone—at least long enough to get rid of the scent of stale sex. Eve had obviously come for a purpose. She never showed up in person without one.

  He walked straight into the blistering hot shower.

  “The others aren’t like us,” she said. “There’s still part of them that believes good conquers evil. And that love triumphs over everything.”

  “And what do we believe?” he asked, using a little more force than necessary to scrub his body.

  “We’re realists,” she said. “We understand that good rarely wins for the sake of good. Even those who believe they’re good win because they’re a little bit evil. We believe that there’s darkness in everyone. And we believe that you do what you can to prevent global catastrophes on a daily basis, until you can’t anymore. And then you walk away.”

  “Bollocks,” he said. “You don’t believe that any more than I do. You can’t bullshit a bullshitter, Eve. I understand you better than the others, which is, I’m sure, why you grace me with these impromptu visits. But you and I are selfish creatures by nature. We want control. We want the power over our own destinies. You get that by playing a game of chess with human lives. I get it by outsmarting man and machine and taking people’s most treasured possessions right out from under their noses, and helping those who are often overlooked.” He rolled his eyes and rinsed his hair. “Or at least, I used to. Now I steal for the ‘good of mankind.’ ”

  “You sound so thrilled about it,” she said.

  “Sometimes I wonder how much good we’re doing, whether we’re just putting out fires the government manufactured. No one wants to be a puppet.”

  “I’m no one’s puppet,” she said. “At least you still get to enjoy the occasional heist. I could’ve stopped you completely.”

  “If you had, I would’ve jumped off that turret and let you fish my dead body out of the Mediterranean. It was the only reason I agreed to your proposition.”

  That had been the deal: that Dante Malcolm would die and be reborn as a Gravedigger—one of a group of elite agents with special skills whose sole mission was to fight global terrorism, at a level the military or other agencies weren’t capable of maintaining. They had no fixed budget and no chain of command other than Eve. They were autonomous and could take whatever steps were needed to get the job done. They had endless resources and technology and weapons that were much more advanced than those the military or its contractors had access to. They were a small unit—only five—but they did the job of entire platoons. It came down to training and skill. They were the best of the best. And Eve had hunted down each of them individually, just like she had him, and recruited them for the job.

  They were all dead men walking. He even had a death certificate. And his significant holdings had been passed to his closest surviving relative, who happened to be his mother, though she’d become a recluse since his death, refusing to show her face in society since her only son had been outed as Simon Locke, the international art thief.

  Eve had known everything about him. She knew his secrets as an MI6 agent, and she knew his secrets as Simon Locke. She’d even known the real Simon Locke who’d passed him the torch and how he was enjoying retirement in Antigua with his new wife.

  There was nothing that could be kept from her. But she’d promised to keep his secrets if he agreed to work for her. She’d told him he’d only get one chance to make a choice. Otherwise, he’d have to take his chances, knowing there was someone out there who knew everything about him and could reveal it all at a moment’s notice.

  His biggest fear was being locked in a cage for the rest of his life. So he’d said yes, and listened to her plan to end his life. She’d given him the suit that had the technology for him to fly without a parachute. He’d been terrified Liv would feel it while he was making love with her, but he’d made sure to keep her hands contained so she couldn’t touch him.

  It had been simple. Just as Eve had promised. What she hadn’t explained in great detail was what would happen after he reached the bottom of the cliff. He hadn’t known that his body would have to be found and that he’d be officially pronounced dead. She hadn’t told him about the serum—that debilitating injection that felt
like hot lead running through his veins until it slowed his heartbeat to almost nonexistent. She hadn’t told him that he’d be put in a coffin and shipped across the ocean to another country, with the identity of an American who’d been unfortunate enough to die overseas, or that he’d be buried six feet under until the others like him dug him from the ground. She didn’t tell him that the mind would wake first, long before the body did, and he’d be trapped, screaming in his head until his body started to function again. Screaming in his head while it felt like thousands of hot needles were being pushed through his skin.

  If that’s what death was like, he preferred never to do it again. He couldn’t imagine that hell would be as bad. But he was a Gravedigger, and he’d learned what it meant to rely on others as if his life depended on them—because it did. He’d gained a brotherhood he’d never experienced before. Working intelligence with MI6 and thieving were solitary jobs. But what he had with The Gravediggers was different.

  What they did was important. And he’d found out very quickly that although Eve was in charge of them, she wasn’t one of them, which made keeping secrets from them all the more difficult. They were his brothers, and he’d lied to them every day so he could live a double life and continue to use the talents that fed his soul.

  And day after day, his conscience ate away at him, so it was sometimes difficult to face them without the guilt strangling him like vines choking the life out of a tree. There was a reason he kept himself separated, living away from the compound.

  He turned off the water and grabbed a towel from the heated bar, drying off quickly and wrapping it around his waist before he exited the shower.

  “I did you a favor,” Eve said. “I know you inside and out, Lord Malcolm. You’d have continued for a while, getting everything you wanted. But eventually you’d have become bored. You like that added element of danger, the potential of getting caught. It’s what feeds your desire to keep going back for more.

  “It wouldn’t have been long before you told Liv the truth. Part of you wanted to tell her. You even toyed with the idea of prolonging the double life, settling down with a white picket fence and slipping out the back window in the dead of night. But how long would it have taken until things started to crumble? Until Liv found out and had the pleasure of arresting her husband? Or did you think you could persuade her to come over to your side?” she asked, brow arched.

  He knew she was right, and it made him all the more furious. “Don’t try to play me, Eve,” he said. “You don’t know me. I’ve spent my career manipulating everyone I’ve ever met, even if there was no need for it. First, because intelligence work required it. And second, because Simon Locke required it. You can spin this tale of how miserable I’d be if I’d chosen another way of life, but the truth is you recruited me because you need me. No one else can do the things I do for you. I know that. And you know that. I also know how valuable I am to this organization, so maybe you could save the brainwashing and tell me why you’re here.”

  She stared at him with cold black eyes, and he wondered if he’d overplayed his hand. When he’d said she played chess with human life, he’d meant it, and she wouldn’t hesitate to take any of them out—handpicked or not—if she felt they no longer served a purpose.

  “There are things worse than death.” Her face was smooth, expressionless, and he felt the cold chill of fear course through his body. “You should pray you never find out what they are.”

  His life had always been simple. Everything had always come easily to him—work and women—which was why he’d loved the challenge burglary presented. It was something he had to work at. Perhaps that’s why he had loved Liv so much—the longer their relationship had lasted, the more effort he’d had to put into it. But instead, he’d chosen the easy way out.

  “Put some clothes on—we’ve got work to do.” She turned to walk out, and then stopped and looked back at him. And then at the Degas hanging over his bathtub. Her mouth quirked in a smile. “Nice painting.”

  Lucifer couldn’t hold a candle to Eve Winter. He could almost smell the sulfur as she walked away.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Dante didn’t hurry.

  Varying his routine for Eve would only give her an entitled sense of power. She had too much of that as it was. He dressed as he normally would have—black jeans and a charcoal shirt he left untucked, the sleeves rolled up and the top two buttons undone. He left his feet bare and his hair damp.

  The living area of the condo was dark. She’d used the remote to lower the blackout shades and made herself comfortable in one of the sleek gray armchairs, her legs crossed and her attention focused on her phone. His mouth twitched. She was letting him know that she wasn’t in a hurry either.

  The living room was similar in style to his bedroom—sleek, modern, and expensive. The artwork was all original—he never would’ve tolerated a fake. The wall between the living area and kitchen was a floor-to-ceiling saltwater fish tank that cast the room in an eerie undulating blue. He didn’t spend a lot of time here because of his work with The Gravediggers, but when he was home he wanted to be completely comfortable.

  He liked fine things, and he never made any apologies for it, although the guys liked to give him a hard time. They knew only part of his background—that he’d grown up privileged and that he’d joined MI6 more out of boredom than a sense of duty to his country, though he’d found he had a rather strong loyalty to his country after all.

  But the others didn’t know the real Dante. They didn’t know the full scope of his talents. They didn’t comprehend his burning desire to see something extraordinary and know that it could be his. Between MI6 and his life as Simon Locke, he’d managed to defeat the boredom and find a semblance of purpose in his life.

  Dante noticed that Eve had made herself at home, and a bottle of water sat on a coaster on the glass end table. He’d never seen her drink anything else, but it wasn’t as if their visits were frequent, although she probably spent more time with him than with anyone. But only because he was useful to her. He didn’t fool himself into thinking it was for any other reason.

  When it came down to it, he didn’t know a thing about Eve Winter. And he’d looked. On more than one occasion. She’d recruited him to be a Gravedigger for his skill at getting into and out of secure places and taking what wasn’t his, though it was no longer art that he stole, but sensitive information.

  The secrets that were most important to keep were never put in a database—technology was too easy to breach. But he’d been in the bowels of the Pentagon and the CIA, in the archives of his own country and many others. And never had he seen a file for her. Of course, that didn’t mean she didn’t exist. Simon Locke no longer had any files either. Even the hard copy files Liv had kept locked in the safe in her apartment were gone.

  But Eve—and he doubted that was her real name—had seemingly come out of nowhere. Her accent was indiscernible, her speech patterns indefinable. He didn’t know where she called home. If she had a family. She was an enigma. And like a piece of art that was seemingly unobtainable, she fascinated him.

  “I’m assuming you’re not here for a social call,” he said, taking a bottle of wine from the fridge below the bar and getting a corkscrew out of the drawer. He was in the mood for a crisp white, and he had an Australian blend that would satisfy.

  She looked up and arched a brow. “I didn’t realize you were in need of friends. I’ll itemize the request and put it under ‘miscellaneous’ in the report I send to The Directors.”

  “If the others only knew what a smart-ass you are,” he said, shaking his head. “They’re really missing out on these great bonding moments. Maybe you should come clean.”

  “Maybe you should,” she countered. “I’m sure they’d be fascinated to know about Simon Locke.”

  “Who?” he asked, smiling. “The name doesn’t ring a bell. And if I recall, there are no records he ever existed. Not even a Google search will pull up an article.”

 
; Her mouth quirked at the corner, but there was no humor in her smile. “I’m sure a file exists somewhere,” she said.

  “I’d be disappointed if it didn’t.”

  He wasn’t a fool. He’d known the moment she recruited him that she knew everything about him, down to the darkest detail. He had to admire her for it. No one else had ever been able to put all the pieces together. He still didn’t know how she’d done it. He’d thought back and checked his work, his alibis. He’d been careful. There was no hint of Dante Malcolm and Simon Locke being one and the same. But still, she’d known.

  “Maybe if we’re done bonding we can get to work,” she said, uncrossing her legs and coming to her feet.

  He pushed a button on the underside of the bar. There was a slight whir as the large abstract painting behind the couch was pulled back into the wall and replaced with a screen, while the coffee table rose to waist level, the tabletop flipping over so the underside was exposed. It was opaque white and lit up as it slid fully into place.

  A panel appeared atop the bar’s smooth surface and he placed his hand on it, waiting for it to turn green and activate the system.

  “Good evening, Lord Malcolm,” the computer said.

  “Hello, Elaine,” he said. “Lovely to hear your voice as always. Please allow access to Eve Winter as well.”

  Elaine was the perfect union of technology and robotics. There was nothing anywhere in the world like her. She had an incomprehensible knowledge of all things. She was free to think on her own and had developed her own personality, much to the amusement of them all. She was the glue of The Gravediggers, and could be found wherever the mission called them.

  “Of course,” Elaine agreed. “Good evening, Miss Winter.” Elaine’s voice went cold as she spoke to Eve, and Dante couldn’t help but grin. Eve tended to rub everyone the wrong way.

  “Scan for any breaches in security or listening devices,” Eve ordered.

  They waited a full minute before Elaine responded, “All clear.”