Stranded with a Spy Read Online Free Page A

been waiting for her. Whipping out his cell phone, Cutter zoomed in on the man’s red face and took several quick shots with the instrument’s built-in, jazzed-up camera. A click of a button transmitted the photos instantly to OMEGA. Cutter followed with a terse instruction to Mike Callahan.
    “Give me an ID on this guy, and fast.”
    “Will do.”
    He needed to get closer for the sensitive receiver built into the phone to pick up the conversation between his target and the fleshy tourist. Abandoning his coffee and sandwich, Cutter exited the boulangerie and crossed the cobbles. He kept to the shadows thrown by the cathedral directly above. With each step closer, the receiver filtered out the background noise from the busy street until Dawes’s voice came through sharp and angry.
    “No, thank you.”
    “Ahhh, c’mon. We’re both ’Mericans. Let me buy you a glass of wine. Jes’ one glass.”
    From the sound of it, the supposed tourist had already downed several glasses. Or wanted to give that impression.
    “Didn’t you hear me? I said no.”
    Dawes’s icy reply didn’t deter the man. His heavy cheeks creasing into a smirk, he hooked his arm over the back of her chair.
    “I heard you. From what Congressman Kent and those others said, though, your ‘no’ really means ‘maybe.’”
    With a sound of disgust, Dawes slipped her sunglasses back onto her nose and gathered her purse.
    “Hey! Where y’going?”
    Stumbling to his feet, the big man tossed some bills down on his table and followed her into the street. If this was an act, Cutter thought, it was a damned good one.
    Dawes kept her face averted and marched stiffly ahead, but that didn’t deter the persistent tourist.
    “The papers said you like to pick up men in bars,” he said, loud enough to turn the heads of several passersby. “I’ve got a couple hours to kill before I have to climb back onto that damned bus. Plenty of time for us to have some fun.”
    Shoulders rigid, Dawes turned into a narrow alley to escape her tormentor. The tourist followed, with Cutter some yards behind. Ingrained habit had him doing an instinctive sweep for obstacles, hostiles and possible escape routes. There didn’t appear to be many of the latter.
    Tall buildings with carved lintels and slate roofs leaned in on both sides, cutting off the sunlight and almost obscuring the flowers that decorated doorways and windowsills. A stone horse trough was set dead center in the middle of the cobbles, testimony to Mont St. Michel’s main means of transportation for centuries.
    “Wait up, sweet thing!” Dodging the watering trough, the tourist grabbed his quarry’s arm. “We kin…”
    “Let go of me!” A mass of seething fury, Dawes whirled around and yanked her arm free of his hold. “Touch me again, you obnoxious ass, and I swear I’ll…”
    “You’ll what?” He waggled his brows in an exaggerated leer. “Charge me with sexual harassment, like you did Congressman Kent?”
    “I’ll do what I should have done to Kent,” she ground out through clenched teeth, “and knee you in your nut-sized brain.”
    The threat didn’t faze her tormentor. If anything, it seemed to add spice to his sport.
    “Whoo-ee. Aren’t you a feisty one? That guy you dated in school said you liked it raunchy, even rough sometimes. That’s fine with me.”
    Cutter kept to the shadows. He’d prefer not to break cover or show himself to his target, but the situation was starting to get ugly.
    A few yards away, Mallory had come to the same conclusion. She knew damned well all she had to do was scream. They were only a few yards off a main street crowded with tourists. One panicked shriek, one piercing cry, and a dozen people would charge to her rescue.
    Then the police would arrive on the scene. She’d have to deal with their questions, their carefully blank faces when this loudmouthed fool ranted about how she’d led him on, like she had all the others back in the States.
    Better to