Game For Anything. Cara Summers

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СКАЧАТЬ he took a good swallow. It would take about five minutes for the contents to work its magic on his stomach.

      He planned to spend the night in Sophie’s apartment, but not in her bed. Tonight, he wasn’t going to take any chances. He hadn’t kept watch over the Princess for two years without figuring out what her weaknesses were, and she was a sucker for strays and under-dogs.

      When the first stomach cramp hit, he closed the distance between the cars and let his weave all the way onto the shoulder. Slamming on the brakes, he made sure the tires made plenty of noise on the gravel before he came to a complete stop. Then he stumbled out of the car and emptied his stomach on the grass verge.

      If he knew the Princess, just pretending to be sick wasn’t going to work. She was going to need to see the evidence, and there it was. One of his foster mothers had introduced him to the curative powers of ipecac when he’d gotten into her medicine cabinet. He kept a bottle in the kit with his other “tools.”

      Leaning against the fender, weaker than he’d thought he would be, he watched Sophie gun her car backward along the shoulder until she screeched to a halt about five feet in front of him. She was out of the car and running toward him so fast that watching her brought on another wave of nausea. He pressed a hand against his stomach.

      “What happened? Are you all right?”

      The concern in her eyes was everything he’d hoped for. Plan A was going to work just fine.

      “It must have been something I ate.”

      When she glanced past him at the grass, he tried to block her view after he was sure she’d seen the evidence.

      Her eyes narrowed. “Are you drunk?”

      He shook his head and felt another wave of nausea hit. This one had him doubling over, and his deposit just missed her opened-toed sandals. He was beginning to think he’d taken too big a dose.

      “C’mon. I’ll drive. You’re in no condition to operate a vehicle. You can send one of your men to pick up your car later.”

      “I didn’t drink too much. It was the food,” he protested as she opened the passenger door and settled him inside. Before she got the door shut, he leaned out and made another deposit on the grass.

      Without a word, she closed the door, marched around to get in the driver’s side. Plan A might have a few minor bumps that had to be ironed out, but he figured he was halfway there when she started the car.

      “Sorry about this. I think I just need some sleep,” he said as they pulled back onto the highway. It had been more than twenty years since his foster mom had dosed him, and he didn’t recall feeling this sleepy afterward. Nor had his head felt quite this heavy. He tried to clear his mind. “T.J.”

      “What?” Sophie sent him a sideways glance.

      “My name. It’s T.J. Next question’s mine.”

      “Not on your life,” she said. “Initials don’t count. I want your real name, or a penalty. But let’s get you back on your feet first.”

      It wouldn’t hurt to pretend to sleep, he decided. That should be enough to get the Princess to take him home with her.

      THE NEXT THING Tracker knew, someone was nudging his shoulder.

      “Time to wake up.”

      “Hmm? Where are we?” Opening his eyes, he blinked against the lights.

      “We’re at the hospital.”

      He came fully awake and saw that Sophie had pulled the car into the well-lit entrance of a hospital emergency room. “I’m not going in there.”

      “Afraid of hospitals, are we?”

      “No. I just don’t need one.”

      “Relax,” she said as she climbed out of the driver’s seat and walked around the front of the car. “Don’t worry about a thing.”

      Damn, he’d underestimated her nurturing instinct. And she had him between a rock and a hard place. If he told her he wasn’t really sick, he’d ruin plan A. While he mulled over what to do, she opened the car door.

      “I told you I was fine,” he said.

      “C’mon, I’ll hold your hand while they examine you,” she assured him as she helped him out of the car.

      Shit, he thought. By the time they released him, he’d sure as hell better come up with Plan B.

      “REPORT,” the man said as he pressed the button on the speakerphone. Then he leaned forward to adjust the position of one of his knights on the chessboard.

      “Everything is going according to plan.”

      “Not quite,” said the man.

      There was a beat of silence. He let it stretch to two beats and then three. “Your plan was to become her lover so that you would be intimate with her when the shipment arrived. She left the party with another man.”

      “I’ll be at the shop when the coin arrives tomorrow.”

      “But you’ll have company. He’s in her apartment right now, and perhaps in her bed, where you were supposed to be.”

      “I’ll handle it.”

      “You know the penalty if you don’t.”

      Replacing the receiver, the man leaned back in his chair and studied the reaction of his companion.

      “I can handle him. Just give me the word, and I’ll have him out of the way.”

      “Such ruthlessness,” the man admonished. He would discourage it now, but it would come in handy later. He took a sip of his brandy. “Patience, my friend. This particular puppet may still be of some use. Besides, removing him now might draw too much attention to Ms. Wainwright’s shop, and we don’t have the coin yet.”

      The man called the Puppet Master had other puppets in place. Any one of them could get the coin tomorrow, and his companion would be useful later. His long-term success lay in knowing how to play the game.

      He would wait, for now. The coin would be here tomorrow and once he had it, he would have all three.

      “Your move.” He smiled and gestured toward the chessboard.

      4

      TRACKER AWOKE to find a rather large, tiger-striped cat sleeping on his chest. In the time it took him to remove the creature and set it on the floor, his mind cleared and the events of the previous evening came flooding back.

      The side trip to the emergency room had turned out better than he’d expected. After a two-hour wait, they’d finally been escorted to a sheet-draped cubicle where an exhausted-looking doctor had ventured a diagnosis of mild food poisoning and pronounced Tracker good to go. By that time, he’d fully recovered from any lingering effects of the ipecac he’d taken, and he’d managed to charm one of the nurses into suggesting to Sophie that she keep him under СКАЧАТЬ