Dangerous Liaisons Read Online Free

only vice. Besides, our friends have enough of my DNA to grow me new lungs.”
    “They probably could, at that.” Jesse folded her hands on a knee. “As for me, I’m expendable. He cleaned out my safe deposit box.”
    The Professor scrutinized her. “I hope the information he’s after is somewhere safe.”
    Jesse nodded. She had debated whether or not to tell him about the disc, and decided against it. She'd dragged him into this mess, but wouldn’t take him down if she fell. If Lanton deciphered the encryption, she would never confess that Tom had a part in her getting the disc.
    In the meantime, Lanton would go crazy trying to break the encryption. Too bad she hadn’t saved the article written by DC’s most prominent gossip columnist, Zoe Shelby, about a certain RL who had been spotted in an off-the-beaten-path restaurant with a swanky uptown escort. The information was public knowledge, but the look on his face when he found the article in her safe deposit box would have been worth a year’s salary.
    Jesse could imagine Helen’s face when she received the first consoling phone call from one of her socialite friends. Pissing away a woman’s fortune was one thing. Being seen about town with prostitutes was another. Lanton’s penchant for BDSM had yet to leak. Would that scandal be enough for Helen Lanton to divorce him?
    At five-ten, two hundred pounds and balding, he didn’t fit the profile of a playboy with a rich wife and lovers. High priced hookers and exclusive BDSM clubs would be a thing of the past if his wife cut him off. At best, his GS-13 salary would buy him a back alley fuck.
    Tom took another drag on his cigar, then asked, “How’s Amanda?”
    His question pulled her back to the present and the fear that hovered too close to the surface. “No one’s bothered her.” Jesse pictured Amanda’s face as it lit up whenever Jesse appeared. Despite Amanda’s chronological age of thirty-five, her smile was that of an innocent eight-year-old—hell, she was an eight-year-old.
    “She’ll be all right,” Tom said.
    Jesse smiled with affection. Tom was one of the few people who appreciated Amanda’s special gift of statistical calculus.
    “Madrid and Hong Kong convinced me Lanton was dirty, but massacring his own team shocked me.” She blocked recall of the two Green Team members’ deaths before it rose. “He deserves a slow death.”
    The Professor raised both eyebrows. “Remind me never to piss you off.”
    Jesse took a deep breath. “I thought you felt the same way.”
    He grinned. “Well, seems I’m going to have the last say, doesn’t it?”
    “If we can track the source of the two million dollar Swiss account, you will. That has to be the money Amadeo Perez paid for Green Team’s slaughter.” She paused. “What do you know about them, Tom?”
    “Nothing. Sorry. You didn’t ask—”
    “No.” She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”
    He paused for a long moment, then added in a hushed voice, “Those men aren’t the only ones who died as a result of Lanton’s double-cross.”
    Jesse remembered Martinez, and started to agree, then realized what he meant. “No!” she cried. but saw the truth in his eyes.
     

Chapter Six
     
    “How—I didn’t hear—she was twelve years old,” Jesse choked.
    She had seen pictures of Maria Hamilton. The girl shared her mother’s Ecuadorian dark hair and brown eyes. She would— should —have grown up to be a real beauty.
    “Tom.”
    Jesse reached toward him, half blind. His fingers closed warm around her hand as her mind flashed back to the moment she’d turned away from the village and Green Team. She’d decided she had to stay alive so that she could prove Lanton’s guilt and save Amanda. She’d told herself that Amadeo Perez wouldn’t chance losing such a valuable hostage as Maria Hamilton by leaving her in the village where U.S. agents could find her. Maria wasn’t there. There wasn’t a thing Jesse could do to help