Hero Under Cover. Suzanne Brockmann

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      “Death is a major problem for the Navaho,” Annie said. She smiled. “Actually, I can’t think of too many cultures that look forward to death, but the Navaho really don’t like it. In fact, if someone dies inside a house, even today, that house will sometimes be abandoned. See, the Navaho believe that the place a person dies in, and the things he touches before dying or even after he’s dead, can contain his bad spirit. Making a death mask would be a real invitation to disaster. The Navaho would never make something like a death mask. But it was the custom at the time in England, you know, to make a mold of the dead person’s face and then cast a mask from it to get a likeness. I guess Stands Against the Storm was something of a celebrity—and certainly a curiosity, a Red Indian from the Wild West—so when he died, they made a death mask.”

      Annie looked over at the answering machine. What she couldn’t figure out was how it had become public knowledge that she was working on authenticating Stands Against the Storm’s death mask. Unless Ben Sullivan, or Steven Marshall, the purchaser, had leaked something….

      “Hey, Annie?”

      She met Cara’s worried brown eyes. “It just occurred to me,” the taller woman said. “That message on the answering machine is basically a…Well, it’s a death threat.”

      “It was just some nut.” Annie shrugged it off. “Besides, I don’t believe in ghosts.”

      “You gotta admit, it’s creepy,” Cara said. “Maybe we should, I don’t know…Call the police?”

      Annie groaned, dropping her head onto her arms on the desk top. “No more police, no more FBI, no way. I’d much rather be haunted by the spirit of Stands Against the Storm.”

      ANNIE SAT UP IN BED, WIDE-EYED in the darkness as the burglar alarm shrieked.

      Her heart pounded from being awakened so suddenly. She clicked on the light and grabbed her robe. Oh, Christmas! This damned alarm was going to raise the entire neighborhood.

      She ran down the stairs two at a time and turned on the lights in the foyer as she crossed toward the alarm-system control panel.

      Oh my God, thought Annie. It wasn’t a malfunction! The alarm schematic showed a breach in the system on the first floor. A window in the lab was marked as the intruder’s point of entry.

      Suddenly she was very glad for the shrieking alarm. Across the street, she could see the neighbors’ lights go on, and she knew they’d call the police—they always did. She ran back up to her room and opened the drawer on her bedside table. Oh, damn, damn, damn, where was it?

      She pulled the drawer out of the table and emptied it onto her bed. There it was.

      She grabbed the toy gun, unwinding a stray piece of string from the barrel, and headed toward the stairs. She ran down and kicked open the door to the lab. She flicked on the light switch with her elbow and the bright fluorescent bulbs illuminated the room.

      No one was there—either human or inhuman.

      But the window had been broken.

      Feeling just a little silly, she put the plastic gun down on the lab counter and stepped carefully toward the large rock that had been thrown through the window. There was a piece of paper attached to it with a rubber band.

      Spinning lights from two police cars caught her eye as they pulled into her driveway. She went to the front door and keyed into the control panel the code to cancel the alarm. The shrill noise stopped instantly. Taking a deep breath, she opened the door to the town police officers.

      They came inside and looked at the broken window. One of them made a quick survey of the house, checking to make sure all the windows and doors were still locked, while the other radioed in to the station.

      Big doings in a small town. Annie sighed. She went into the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee. Something told her this was going to be a long night.

      PETERSON WOKE UP INSTANTLY and answered the phone after only one ring.

      “Yeah,” he said, looking at the glowing numbers of his clock: 3:47. He ran one hand across his face. “This better be good.”

      “It’s Scott. Can you talk?” Whitley Scott said in his flat New Jersey accent.

      “Yeah, I’m awake,” Pete said, sitting up and turning on his light.

      “No, I mean…are you alone?”

      “Yeah, I’m alone.” Pete rubbed his eyes. “If you check my file, you’ll see that I haven’t been involved with anyone since last March.”

      “I’ve already checked your file,” the FBI agent said easily. “And it says you’ve got something of a reputation as a tomcat.”

      Pete was silent, thinking about that new administrative assistant in the New York City office. Carolyn something. She had curly brown hair and legs a mile long. And eyes that made it more than clear that she was interested in him, no-strings-attached. She’d invited him out for a drink last night. If he had gone with her, she’d probably be lying here right now, next to him.

      But he’d turned her down.

      Why? Maybe because, regardless of the fact that he’d be using her the exact same way, he was tired of being the flavor of the month for ambitious, upwardly mobile women.

      Even though he wasn’t overly tall, he knew that with his black hair and his dark brown eyes, he had the dark and handsome part down cold.

      For years, he’d used his good looks to his advantage, but recently it had been rubbing him the wrong way. His relationships, which usually lasted a month or two, were getting shorter and shorter. And when he’d looked at that administrative assistant last night, he hadn’t felt the usual heat from knowing that she wanted him. If he’d felt anything at all, it had been disdain.

      More than once over the past few months, the thought of retiring from the agency had crossed his mind. The closer he got to his fortieth birthday, the more aware he seemed to become of an emptiness in his life.

      He couldn’t figure out what he was looking for. He was far too jaded to believe in true love—hell, he was too jaded to believe in any kind of love. And if he stopped having relationships based on animal attraction, on sex, he was in for a whole lot of cold, lonely nights….

      “You still there?” Whitley Scott asked.

      “Yeah.”

      “We’ve found a way for you to get close to Anne Morrow,” Scott said. “She practically handed it to us on a platter.”

      Pete listened intently as Scott explained. It would work. It would definitely work.

      After he hung up the phone and turned the light off, Pete stared up at the dark ceiling, feeling a wave of anticipation so charged that it was almost sexual. In a sudden flash of memory, he saw black lace against pale skin, and a pair of wide, blue eyes….

      “THE NOTE SAID WHAT?” Cara’s voice rose sharply.

      “It was stupid,” Annie said, clearing some of the clutter off her desk. “I can’t believe the police took it seriously.”

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