Step Right Up! Welcome to Rubicon International Where All the Agents are Shifters.
Lars,
Rubicon International, #2
By Ann Gimpel
Dream Shadow Press
63K words
Release Date: 6/28/16Genre: Shifter Romantic Suspense
Undercover Shifter Bad Boys = Alphas With Serious Attitude
Tumble Across the Rubicon Into the Death-Riddled World of International Espionage
Tamara MacBride has a much
bigger problem than hiding her shifter side from the world. By the skin of her
teeth, and with a smattering of Irish luck, she manages to kill her sister’s
murderer. Escaping from the scene of the crime is much harder than she
anticipated. Just when she thinks she might be safe, her cab driver shrieks and
slumps over the wheel.
An unknown assailant terminates
Lars Kinsvogel’s target. Pleased by the outcome—after all dead is dead—he
exchanges the glitz of Monte Carlo for a nearby airport, intent on collecting
the private plane he left there. He’s no sooner arrived when a cab jumps the
curb, and he races over to investigate. There’s not much he can do for the
cabbie, but his passenger is still very much alive.
Trying to hustle Tamara out of
the cab is tough. She’s frozen by fear, but when Lars lays out the rest of his
plan to move her out of danger’s path, her temper flares. He can’t leave her
alone in Monte Carlo. Can he convince her to trust him in time to save her
life?
Lars Kinsvogel sucked in an annoyed
breath. Anxiety and greed thickened the air in Monte Carlo’s Place de Casino,
and he stifled a choking sound. Damn his hypersensitive shifter senses. If it
weren’t for them, the desperation hovering around him wouldn’t be quite so
palpable. Casinos were always like this, though, a haven for the rash and
reckless. What had likely begun as a harmless pastime turned into hardcore
addiction for an unfortunate few, forcing them to return again and again
despite diminishing returns.
Hope
springs eternal. All the poor sods need is one more spin of the wheel, another
hand of cards… Lars glanced up, right into the croupier’s beady gaze.
“Would monsieur like to place a
bet?” The croupier grinned with all the warmth of a hammerhead shark,
displaying a mouthful of bad teeth. What was it with the French and their
aversion to dentistry? Lars shook his head and made shooing motions with one
hand. He’d have to either join the baccarat game soon or move on, but he could
get away with loitering for a few more minutes without drawing undue attention
to himself.
His target, a powerfully built
man with features revealing Chinese ancestry, had an arm slung around a
striking brunette. Maybe she was one of the hookers who worked the casino
circuit, or maybe she was a steady thing for the man.
Lars considered it and decided
she could be both. Around five feet eight, she had a lush, curvy body, dark
hair cut into a stylish bob that fell a few inches past her shoulders, and
memorable eyes the color of a restless ocean. A short, black sheath hugged her
like a second skin. Open nearly to her waist, it displayed half her full
breasts. Even though Lars’ appraisal was surreptitious, he forced his gaze
elsewhere. The woman was sex incarnate, and he didn’t need anything diverting
him from his objective.
Jaret Chen pressed chips into
his companion’s hand and urged her to pick a number. He gave one of her breasts
a familiar squeeze, which earned him a smile, perfectly rouged lips stretching
over impossibly straight teeth—and a slight shake of her head. Color stained
her tanned skin. Lars realized he was looking at the woman again, wondering how
her breasts would feel beneath his fingers. She seemed uncomfortable with
Jaret’s frank exploration of her body, so she probably wasn’t a pro. For some
unexplained reason, Lars felt relieved. The woman was too elegant to earn her
living lying on her back.
He snorted to himself and
studied the flashing display above the baccarat table. Maybe the woman wasn’t
French. That might explain her perfect teeth—and her discomfort with having her
body mauled in public. At least she held Jaret’s attention. So far the drug
dealer hadn’t spared him so much as a sidelong glance. Lars had never met the
man, but knew a great deal about him from an extensive dossier provided by
Rubicon International. Deeply involved in the heroin trade from the Middle
East, across the Mediterranean, and into Europe, Jaret was one of the
principals in a large operation—and Lars’ current target.
He sized the man up. Maybe six
feet, he had a barrel chest. Strongly muscled arms strained against the fabric
of his cream-colored, silk dress shirt. His art deco tie had been loosened.
Dark eyes, pronounced cheekbones, and straight dark hair cut short blended with
his business attire. For all intents and purposes, he was indistinguishable
from the phalanx of wealthy—and wannabe wealthy—men circulating through the
casino. Lars glanced at his own cream-colored silk shirt and black linen pants.
With the exception that his tie was still firmly knotted, he and Jaret were
dressed as twins.
Guess
neither of us wanted to stick out in anyone’s memory.
Lars glanced at his Rolex.
Close to midnight and time to move on. He’d seen enough. Now it was a matter of
figuring out where and when to strike. These things always went more smoothly
when he was close to invisible. He melted into the crowd and made his way
outside. The casino fronted the French Riviera, and Lars stood looking out at
the Mediterranean for long moments. The water was quiet tonight, waves barely
slapping the white sand beach. His cell phone, set on silent, vibrated against
his hip, and he tugged it from a pocket to look at the display.
Private. Damn! Could be anyone.
Lars punched the answer icon,
held the phone to his ear, and waited. No need to say anything until he knew
who was on the other end.
“Are you somewhere you can
talk?”
Lars inhaled sharply as Garen
LeRochefort’s voice came through the phone’s speaker.
Another shifter, Garen had
founded Rubicon International with Lars hundreds of years before. The mechanics
of the spy game had changed drastically between the late seventeen hundreds and
modern times, but the basics—kill or be killed—hadn’t altered much. Everyone
who worked for Rubicon International was some type of shifter. Lars’ animal form
was a mountain lion, Garen’s a wolf.
Lars loped farther down the
beach until he cleared several couples engaged in deep, hungry kisses before
responding. “What has happened?” Something must have, or Garen wouldn’t have
risked contact.
“You need to leave.”
“But I have not—”
“Doesn’t matter,” Garen cut in.
“I’ll explain when you’re back in the office on a fully encrypted line.”
Lars thought about his twin
engine Piper Seneca waiting at the Nice airport, twenty-four kilometers from
Monte Carlo. It gave him freedom to come and go, and was much cheaper to
operate than the business class jets he also owned. “Maybe I could still—”
“No!” The one word thundered so
loud, Lars moved the phone away from his ear. “Don’t even go back to your
room.” Garen hesitated. “Old friend. Trust me on this.” The line went dead.
Lars stared at the iPhone’s
display and dropped the device back into his pocket. He’d been compromised. He
wasn’t certain quite how, and a part of him was curious as hell. He kept
walking, swinging in a wide circle to head back toward the Hotel de Paris.
Garen had said not to return to his room, but if he was careful, maybe he could
learn something critical that would help their side.
“Ja, forewarned is forearmed,” he muttered.
Keycard in hand, he let himself
into a side door of the rambling old structure, got his bearings, and started
cautiously up a stairwell. His suite was on the second floor, at the very end
of the wing facing the Mediterranean. He’d always loved the old hotel with its
thick, patterned carpets and antique lighting and furnishings. Staying next to
the walls, he used a bit of shifter magic to cast a don’t look here spell. It wouldn’t keep someone determined from
seeing him, but it didn’t require much magic, either.
He entered the second floor a few
doors from his own and scanned the empty hallway, his senses on high alert.
Midnight was early in Monte Carlo, a city where people frequently stayed up
through dawn and slept the day away, so he fully expected to see other guests,
but the hall was mercifully empty. He padded silently toward his door and
examined it, wishing he’d set a trap. He inhaled, trying to sort scents, but
there were too many to make sense of. He could leave, just walk away like Garen
had almost ordered him to, but Lars had never been a coward, and he was more
intrigued than frightened. He’d spent years worming his way out of dicey
situations. This was just one more, and he was damned if he’d walk away from
his things. Not unless he had to.
He took a deep breath, tugged
his guaranteed-not-to-set-off-metal-detectors .32 caliber revolver from its
ankle holster, and shoved the key card into the slot in the door. A tiny
electric motor hummed before the deadbolt snicked out of the way. He turned the
latch, kicked the door open, and pivoted from side to side, scanning the
sitting room of his suite, gun at the ready. Lars waited in the doorway, barely
breathing, and then he heard a muted click, followed by an unmistakable whirr,
and knew.
A bomb.
He cursed in German, not
knowing if he was more annoyed with the turn of events or with himself for not
taking Garen’s advice and getting the hell out of there.
* * * *
Tamara MacBride pushed the
betting chips back into Jaret’s hand. “Sure and I’m not feeling like wagering
just now,” she murmured. “Why don’t you do it for me?”
He shot her an odd look. “But
you like to gamble.”
You
only think I do.
“Something we had for supper
didn’t quite settle. Would you mind if I sat somewhere?” She swayed a bit on
her feet to make her statement more realistic and sent a weak smile his way. In
truth, she was a bit nauseated. Between sweat and greed, the air in the casino
stank of humanity’s darker side. Expensive colognes added a queer edge, their
rich scents intensifying as their owners’ anxiety rose. If she hadn’t been a
shifter, she might not have noticed, at least not as much. So far, she’d done a
decent job hiding what she was from Jaret. She aimed to keep things that way.
He ran a thick index finger
down the bare skin between her breasts. “We could return to our rooms.”
She crinkled her face in what
she hoped looked like an apology and did her best to ooze regret. “Better wait
until my tummy settles.” He was arrogant enough, he had no idea how repulsive
she found him. Thank all the bloody saints, she’d managed to keep any sexual
activities between them tamped down to nothing because of his heroin habit.
According to a bit of Internet research, she supposed he could probably get
hard, but the drug suppressed orgasms. At least so far, he’d been much more
interested in his next shot of dope and drifting into an opiate-induced dreamy
void than in bothering her for sex.
Jaret returned his attention to
the baccarat table. “I’ll just be over there.” She pointed to a row of padded
Louis Fourteenth chairs with bowed legs. Jaret nodded absently. His pupils were
very small, so he was still fully under the influence of his last shot. That
meant she had at least a couple of hours before he’d need to leave the casino.
Tamara tottered to a chair on
ridiculously high heels. They made her feet ache, but Jaret liked it when she
dressed like a fancy woman and pleasing him was high on her list. She settled
onto the plush seat and slipped her shoes off. A waiter stopped and arched an
inquiring brow. Nodding pleasantly at him, she ordered club soda. Rubbing the
bridge of her nose between two fingers, she made a grab for her courage. So
far, her plan had gone off without a hitch. The only thing left was to finish
things off.
The waiter handed her drink
over, along with a bowl of salted nuts, and she set both on a nearby chair. The
ebb and flow of noise in the crowded room eddied around her. A quick glance at
Jaret reassured her that he was still deeply engrossed in gambling—his second
favorite addiction, right after heroin. He didn’t care much for women, other
than as window dressing and so the other men would see him as some sort of
stud.
Loved Garen can't wait to read the others in series. :) Thank you.
ReplyDeleteMany thanks for your kind invitation. I’ll join you.
ReplyDeleteWould you like to play cards?
Come to the party with me, please.
See you soon...
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