Paper Rose. Diana Palmer

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СКАЧАТЬ she’d had to learn the truth about her financial status and her supposed educational grant from that dyed blonde who Tate Winthrop was escorting around town these days. Her mind wandered back to a day two years ago, when everything had seemed so perfect, and her dreams had hovered on the cusp of fulfillment….

      

      The airport in Tulsa was crowded. Cecily juggled her carry-on bag with a duffel bag full of equipment, scanning the milling rush around her for Tate Winthrop. She was wearing her usual field gear: boots, a khaki suit with a safari jacket and a bush hat hanging behind her head by a rawhide string. Her natural blond hair was in a neat braided bun atop her head, and through her big-lensed glasses, her green eyes twinkled with anticipation. It wasn’t often that Tate Winthrop asked her to help him on a case. It was an occasion.

      Suddenly there he was, towering over the people around him. He was Lakota Sioux, and looked it. He had high cheekbones and big black, deep-set eyes under a jutting brow. His mouth was wide and sexy, with a thin upper lip and a chiseled lower one and he had perfect teeth. His hair was straight and jet-black; it fell to his waist when he wasn’t wearing it in a braid, as he was now. He was lean and striking, muscular without being obvious. And he’d once worked for a secret government agency. Of course, Cecily wasn’t supposed to know that; or that he was consulting with them on the sly right now in a hush-hush murder case in Oklahoma.

      “Where’s your luggage?” Tate asked in his deep, crisp voice.

      She gave him a pert look, taking in the elegance of his vested suit. “Where’s your field gear?” she countered with the ease of long acquaintance.

      Tate had saved her from the unsavory advances of a drunken stepfather when she was just seventeen. He’d taken her to his mother on the Wapiti Ridge Sioux Reservation near the Black Hills, and there she’d stayed until he got her a scholarship and a grant and enrolled her in George Washington University, down the street from his apartment in Washington, D.C. He’d been her guardian angel through four years of college and the master’s program she was beginning now—doing forensic archaeology. She was already earning respect for her work. She was an honors student all the way, not surprising since she had no social life and could devote all her time to her studies. She didn’t need to date; she had eyes for no man in the world except Tate.

      “I’m security chief of the Hutton corporation,” he reminded her. “This is a freelance favor I’m doing for a couple of old friends. So this is my working gear.”

      She made a face. “You’ll get all dusty.”

      He made a sound deep in his throat. “You can brush me off.”

      She grinned wickedly. “Now that’s what I call incentive!”

      He chuckled. “Cut it out. We’ve got a serious and sensitive situation here.”

      “So you intimated on the phone.” She glanced around the airport. “Where’s baggage claim? I brought some tools and electronic equipment, too.”

      “How about clothes?”

      She stared at him blankly. “What do I need with a lot of clothes cluttering up my equipment case? These are wash-and-wear.”

      He made another sound. “You can’t expect to go to a restaurant in that!”

      “Why not? And who’s taking me to any restaurant?” she demanded. “You never do.”

      He shrugged. “I’m going to do penance while we’re out here.”

      Her eyes sparkled. “Great! Your bed or mine?”

      He laughed in spite of himself. She was the only person in his life who’d ever been able to make him feel carefree, even briefly. She lit fires inside him, although he was careful not to let them show too much. “You never give up, do you?”

      “Someday you’ll weaken,” she assured him. “And I’m prepared. I have a week’s supply of Trojans in my fanny pack….”

      He managed to look shocked. “Cecily!”

      She shrugged. “Women have to think about these things. I’m twenty-three, you know.” She added, “You came into my life at a formative time and rescued me from something terrible. Can I help it if you make other potential lovers look like fried sea bass by comparison?”

      “I didn’t bring you out here to discuss your lack of lovers,” he pointed out.

      “And here I hoped you were offering yourself up as an educational experience,” she sighed.

      He glared down at her as they walked toward baggage claim.

      “Okay,” she said glumly. “I’ll give up, for now. What do you want me to do out here?” she added, and sounded like the professional she really was. “You mentioned something about skeletal remains.”

      He looked around them before he spoke. “We had a tip,” he told her, “that a murder could be solved if we looked in a certain place. About twenty years ago, a foreign double agent went missing near Tulsa. He was carrying a piece of microfilm that identified a mole in the CIA. It would be embarrassing for everybody if this is him and the microfilm surfaced now.”

      “I gather that your mole has moved up in the world?”

      “Don’t even ask,” he told her, then, with a smile he added, “I don’t want to have to put you in the witness protection program. All you have to do is tell me if this DB is the one we’re looking for.”

      “Dead body,” she translated. Then she frowned. “I thought you had an expert out here.”

      “You can’t imagine what sort of damned expert these guys brought with them.”

      Yes, she could, but she didn’t say anything.

      “Besides,” he added with a quick glance, “you’re discreet. I know from experience that you don’t tell everything you know.”

      “What did your expert tell you about the body?”

      “That it’s very old,” he said with exaggerated awe. “Probably thousands of years old!”

      “Why do you think it isn’t?”

      “For one thing, there’s a .32 caliber bullet in the skull.”

      “Well, that rather lets out a Paleo-Indian hunter,” she agreed.

      “Sure it does. But I need an expert to say so, or the case will be summarily dropped. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want a former KGB mole making policy for me.”

      “Me, neither,” she said inelegantly. “You do realize that somebody could have been out to the site and used the skull for target practice?”

      He nodded. “Can you date the remains?”

      “I don’t know. Carbon dating is best, but it takes time. I’ll do the best I can.”

      “That’s good enough for me. Experts in Paleo-Indian archaeology aren’t thick on the ground in the ‘company’ these days. You were the only person I could think of to call.”

      “I’m СКАЧАТЬ