The Silver Fox and the Red-Hot Dove Read Online Free Page A

by the sudden shrieking of alarm systems. Elena clamped her hands over her ears. Down the hall, people hurried from the ballroom. “What is it?” she yelled to Sergei.
    “Fire alarms! Stay here! Right here! I’ll be back!” He galloped toward the crowd. Elena gaped at his retreating bulk. Could it be possible? The alarm seemed to be screaming inside her head.
Now! Run!
She pivoted blindly, searching. Beyond the elevators was a door marked Emergency Exit.
    Five seconds later she was headed down a stark, concrete stairwell, her feet racing to catch up with her heart.
    When the alarms sounded, Audubon skirted the panicky crowd with a calmness borne of his work’s routine brushes with chaos. He managed to get out before the throng of people completely blocked his way. Elena Petrovic’s stocky, aging bodyguard rushed toward him, headed back into the ballroom. Audubon grabbed his arm. “Where is Miss Petrovic?”
    “Waiting by the elevators!”
    As the man continued past, Audubon’s shrewd gaze shot to the elevators. Elena Petrovic was gone. Beyond the elevators the emergency door to the stairwell was swinging closed. Audubon glimpsed an unmistakable flash of gray. So the pigeon had flown the coop.
    The crowd surged out and surrounded him. He cursed eloquently under his breath as he dodged around people. By the time he reached the stairwell, he could only hear the faint patter of feet below him. When he reached the basement parking garage, he swung toward the unmanned exit booth and saw her running past it toward the darkness of a deserted city street. The sheer beauty of her long-leggedstride made him want to cheer; her speed made him groan with dismay.
    He reached the street in time to see her run into a nearby intersection between tall office buildings. A lone pickup truck with a covered bed idled at a red light, unsuspecting. She made a beeline for it, pulled up the canvas flap emblazoned Nilly’s Fine Vegetables, Artemis Island, VA, and climbed inside the truck’s tall, wooden shed.
    Audubon memorized the license plate just as the light changed. He stood in the center of the street, watching the truck pull away, feeling triumphant but sorry for her, because she’d had to resort to such a pitiful avenue for escape. The flap lifted at one corner. She peeked out and froze when she saw him. Then the flap snapped down again.
    Audubon strolled back inside the hotel where security guards were yelling that everything was all right, that someone had pulled the alarm as a prank. Humming under his breath, he went to a phone in the lobby and called his estate. Within fifteen minutes his elite network was preparing to track the flight of the fascinating, mysterious, and possibly dangerous pigeon, whom Audubon intended to capture for himself.

Two
    “So you really can’t talk?”
    Elena nodded her head again and stared at the sun rising over the ocean to her right. She was exhausted, frightened, and trying hard to think of a plan. Her indecision focused on T. S. Audubon for the hundredth time. What had he been up to last night? Who had he told about her escape route? Bitter sorrow filled her as she considered the possibility that her silver fox might just be a silver rat.
Her silver fox
. He had made his mark on her imagination forever.
    An hour before, Beckel Nilly had discovered her in the back of his truck during a stop to buy fuel. Elena had been certain her escape attempt was finished. There were so many criminals in America, Sergei had said, that no one trusted strangers. So who would help a Russian found huddled among tomato crates without money, luggage, or identification?
    But the woman had only grunted with mild surprise and peered at her as if she were an interesting new type of vegetable. “If you’re a runnin’ from somebody,” Beckel Nilly had said, “you might as well do it up front in the cab.”
    Shocked, Elena had realized all wasn’t lost. But her voice, her accent—how could she get by