Dangerous to Hold Read Online Free

Cartoza.
    â€œHow many casualties?” she asked when he paused to consult his notes.
    â€œFour. Three villagers and one suspected insurgent.”
    â€œAny positive ID on the insurgent?”
    â€œNo, the locals are still running their checks. I’ve got some vitals, though, if you want them.”
    Maggie gripped the handset. “Let me have them.”
    â€œFive feet seven. Black hair. Brown eyes. With an old, jagged scar on the left thigh, possibly from a knife. That’s all I have right now.”
    Maggie slumped in relief. Jake certainly sported a shaggy head of black hair, and he’d acquired more than his share of scars over the years. But his eyes were a flinty shade of gray, not brown, and he stood a good five inches taller than the dead man.
    â€œThere’s one more thing.”
    â€œWhat’s that, State?”
    â€œThe villagers led the government forces to a newly dug, shallow grave containing the remains of a woman…an American woman, according to the garbled reports we got. With all the confusion of the raid, we haven’t been able to confirm who it is. Was.”
    Maggie frowned at the console. “Who did you have down there?”
    â€œWe’re not sure. The personnel folks are screening our data files now. Assuming she’s not some tourist who took a wrong turn at Cancún and ended up in the middle of a revolution, we should know something within the next hour or so.”
    â€œKeep me posted, okay?”
    â€œYou got it.”
    Maggie replaced the handset, her eyes thoughtful. At this point there was no reason to assume a connection between the dead woman and Jake’s operation. But she sensed instinctively that there was one, just as she knew that Jake wouldn’t want her to terminate the mission until she was convinced it was necessary.
    Twenty minutes later, she still wasn’t convinced.
    Although she hadn’t yet heard from Jake, she’d sifted through enough fragmentary information to form a picture of what must have happened. The presence of the government forces in the area was a coincidence, an unscheduled military exercise. But their presence would have been enough to scare off the drop aircraft. Maggie guessed that the rebels had raided the village as a target of opportunity when the drop was aborted. There was a chance, a slim chance, that Jake’s cover hadn’t been compromised yet.
    â€œCall me immediately if anything else comes in,” she instructed Samuels. “I’m going to update the chief with this latest information.”
    She strode across the communications center and waited impatiently for the palm-and voice-print scanners to verify her identity. When the heavy door slid open, she took the stairs two at a time. She was in the the special envoy’s reception area within seconds. Another synthesizer activated the door that led to his office. Maggie passed through a short corridor that contained every lethal protective device the enthusiastic security folks could devise.
    The inner door stood open, but the sight of Adam on the special phone that recognized the distinctive voice patterns of only two men in the world stopped Maggie on the threshold. He waved her inside, listening intently, one hip hitched on the edge of the half acre of polished mahogany that served as his desk. Although he’d taken off his formal coat and white tie, he couldn’t have shed his well-bred, aristocratic air even if he wanted to, Maggie thought. When she stepped inside hisoffice, she caught the gleam of diamond studs winking amid the starched pleats of his shirt.
    She also noted the slight narrowing of his vivid blue eyes. That was as close as Adam Ridgeway ever came to frowning. Not for the first time in the past two years, Maggie wondered just what it would take to shatter Adam’s iron control. She herself had managed to strain it severely on more than one occasion, she acknowledged with an inner