The Cinderella Mission Read online

  He passed her a grape-size stone with a necklace hook soldered on the top.

  Kelly let it roll around in her palm. “Maybe I should take a dozen.”

  “It’s also said to be a symbol for chastity.”

  Suddenly, she wanted to pitch it back in the bin.

  “We’ll take it.” Ethan tugged a folded clip full of cash from his pocket and peeled off two one-hundred-dollar bills, obviously purchasing information along with the simple gemstone, even if Clyde did throw in a handful of peppermint sticks for good measure.

  Kelly tucked the candy in her pocket while Ethan slid into interrogation mode. Hooking a casual elbow on the counter, he began quizzing Clyde and the old agent soaked up the chance to revisit his days with the agency. Kelly listened to Clyde explain the intricacies of cutting gems for decorative versus more practical purposes. She catalogued everything he shared to sift through and analyze later.

  Somehow she knew the cost of purchasing this information and the use of Ethan’s plane wouldn’t go onto his agency expense account. This man gave so much of himself and his resources for his country, shrugging it all off as nothing more than a way to pursue thrills.

  If that were the case, then he would be scaling mountains in the Andes. Instead, he channeled those thrill-seeking ways into a higher good.

  How could she not admire him for that?

  How could she not want him?

  The mention of Rebelia jerked her from her ridiculous daydreaming. She needed to keep her mind on the job. Her quest to land in Ethan’s bed would have to come later.

  “In fact,” Clyde leaned back in his chair, peppermint stick dangling from the corner of his mouth, “there’s an old Rebelian saying that goes something like, ‘He who owns the gem of power owns the world.’”

  Kelly inched closer. “Oh, really? How so?”

  “About four hundred years ago, a Rebelian ruler gave his new wife a bridal gift, an exquisite stone set in a necklace. Shortly after the birth of their son, she died. Some said she mourned herself to death because her husband only married her for her royal connection to a neighboring country.”

  Kelly’s hand tightened around the cool weight of her rock. “The poor woman.”

  “The necklace was passed on to her son to give to his wife. A wife who also mysteriously died. Three generations of bumped-off brides later, this one savvy queen-to-be decided she didn’t want any part of that cursed stone. She sold it to a merchant who wanted to exchange his older model spouse for an eighteenth-century trophy wife. The stone disappeared. No one knows for sure what kind of gem it was, but its power over life and death became legendary.”

  Ethan snorted. “What a load of crap.”

  Clyde waggled half a finger in Ethan’s face. “Don’t dismiss it out of hand. Even if you don’t believe it, other people do and that gives it power. Think about it, son. Leaders have been screwing with people’s minds, twisting core beliefs and cultural customs into propaganda since the beginning of time. Take a starving group of peasants and play on that, and the mix is rife for an uprising.”

  “Valid point,” Kelly interjected before Ethan could dismiss the mystical implications out of hand again. “So jewels collected for any number of purposes could be useless if there isn’t someone on hand to assess or cut them.”

  Clyde nodded. “Exactly.”

  Which gave cause for nabbing Morrow, a geologist with a renowned interest in gems.

  Kelly and Ethan exchanged glances before Ethan tugged a second round of bills free as payment for information received. “Thanks for your time, Clyde. You know how to find me if you think of anything else.”

  “Stay awhile.” Clyde crunched a candy cane that was wrapped in his three-fingered grip. “Look around if you want. The mine’s closed to the public for the winter, but I can fire up the generators. My handyman, Johnny, is out back. He can show you around some if you’d like. Just follow the fluorescent arrows painted along the wall. Stay clear of roped-off areas and you’ll be fine.”

  Kelly hesitated. The warmth of Ethan’s hand earlier and the weight of his gift lured her into wanting to steal more from this day. A stroll through the mine would give her the perfect chance to get closer to him. “Ethan?”

  “Sure.” He nodded to the door. “We can play tourist, soak up some more of your woo-hoo stuff about crystals.”

  Kelly jabbed a finger in his arm. “Better watch it, big guy. Don’t diss the crystals.” She tugged the zipper up on her jacket and pulled on her gloves. “Thanks, Clyde.”

  “You bet,” he called as they stepped back into the blustery cold. “And listen to the lady, son.”

  The door swung shut behind them.

  “Yeah, yeah. Whatever.” Ethan palmed her back down the stairs.

  “You’ll be sorry,” she warned, smiling back at him.

  He scooped his gloved hand along the rail. “I’ll show you who’s gonna be sorry.”

  “Hey? What are you doing?” She inched away from the growing mound of snow in the palm of his glove. “Don’t even consider it, Williams. I’ll drop you again.”

  “I’m scared.” He packed the snow as he stalked toward her.

  “No!” Kelly squealed in protest, already reaching behind her to make her own retaliatory snow bomb. He’d warned her to use whatever she could. Too bad for him if he didn’t prepare.

  He advanced the last seven feet between them, his every crunching step launching a delicious thrill of anticipation through her.

  Nose-to-cold-nose, he stopped in front of her. Goosebumps sprinkled her skin beneath her parka as she waited for him to shove the snowball down her jacket.

  He raised his hand.

  She clenched her fingers around the packed snow in the palm of her glove.

  Ethan lifted his snowball higher, chest level, face level, and—

  —took a bite. “Always loved this stuff as a kid.”

  She watched him down another bite. Ethan as a kid, now there was an enchanting image full of motion and mischief.

  Although he looked a hundred percent adult male at the moment.

  Kelly wrapped her fingers around his wrist, urged his arm toward her face until the snowball reached her mouth. As deliberately as Eve taking a bite from the apple, she nipped a section of the packed ice free, swirling her tongue out to catch the crumbling flakes.

  She could have sworn Ethan’s hand shook in her grip. But that wasn’t possible. Not from something so simple.

  From her.

  His eyes dilated. Her breath puffed clouds between them. Ethan dropped his snowball to the ground and gripped her arms. Her hand slipped around his neck.

  He startled under her touch. “What the—”

  Snow cascaded down his jacket from her forgotten snowball. Kelly looked at her glove, compacted crystallized snow gleamed back at her like tiny diamonds.

  He dusted powder off his neck. “Guess you got me, Taylor.”

  Yes, she had. But she knew it would only be for a short time, a much safer prospect than risking some broken heart of legendary proportions yearning for anything more.

  She turned away from the tempting image of Ethan smiling at her. Only her. “Let’s go find that Johnny fellow and see the mine.”

  Lights lined the narrow tunnel, carved earth with jagged holes winding ahead of them. After spending just ten minutes alone with Kelly since Johnny pointed them on their way and went back to work, Ethan questioned his own intelligence in going along with the impromptu tourist gig. Sure, he wanted to show Kelly a good time, help her relax and enjoy life the way he had with piloting the plane.

  But not at the expense of his sanity.

  He sidestepped a decorative mining cart. The shadowy recesses of the mine felt too much like total solitude. He and Kelly—alone. Completely.

  Kelly strode across a planked observation deck and pressed her gloved hand to the chiseled earth, pulling her parka taut across her breasts. Her fingers explored embedded crystal chips. “How depressing to think of the
hours, days, months people spent in here away from the sun.”

  An image of her at her cubicle flashed to mind. Windows weren’t allowed in the deeper bowels of ARIES for security reasons. Did she yearn for light?

  If only he could make her understand there wasn’t any light to be found outside her ARIES office. Just a deeper darkness that sometimes swallowed the soul. “People do what they have to do to survive.”

  “I guess so.” She turned to face him, leaning a hip against the metal railing. The yellow glow from the strips of light overhead cast shadows along her perfect cheekbones. “Well, partner, what do you really think of Clyde’s insights on the mindsets in the region?”

  He thought he wanted to listen to her talk some more, those sultry Kelly-tones echoing all around him in triplicate. “What’s your take on it?”

  “There’s some validity in all of it. People act for any number of reasons. That portion of eastern Europe sports plenty of rebel factions trying to finance an overthrow. Jewels would pay for that. Others act from their belief system. For those people, finding the right jewel would be crucial to establishing a blessed reign or good luck.”

  “Or maybe like the legend, some guy’s collecting jewels for a woman, to entice her, persuade her to take on someone who’s wrong for her.” Was he any different? Damned if he hadn’t been subconsciously trying to lure Kelly all day with private planes and trips, all to cover up for the ways he knew he fell short of being the kind of man she deserved.

  Damn. Not such a selfless gift of friendship after all. Ethan dragged his mind back to work, a safer, more reliable topic. “Who do you think’s responsible?”

  She shrugged. “Certainly Rebelia is a possibility with that nutcase DeBruzkya trying to secure his position. But then Gastonia isn’t the most popular kid on the block now, either, since it’s rumored to harbor terrorist camps. And of course Morrow disappeared in Holzberg. How the hell do they sleep at night with so many enemies around them?”

  He advanced a step closer to her, his hiking boots thudding against the wooden deck. “Better get used to it, Kelly, because that’s the world you’re going to be living in if you commit to being a field operative. What we do is necessary or innocent people die, but that doesn’t make what we do any prettier. You can learn all the self-defense moves in the world and they won’t mean a damn if you forget the most basic element of self-preservation in this job.”

  Ethan leaned until he could see the light glinting in her honey-brown eyes. “Don’t trust anyone.”

  “What about you?”

  “Not even me.” Especially not him. As selfish as he was, he could so easily take everything she had to give. She deserved better. Anyone other than him, except the image of her finding that man tore him up inside.

  Christ, he wanted her. Right or wrong, he wanted her for himself. Ethan canted closer, wanted even closer still to see if the taste of their shared snowball lingered in her mouth. “We should head back.”

  “We should,” she agreed but didn’t move. He could already taste her from just the air they shared as they stood so close together.

  He forced his feet to carry him backward, away from her. “The airport will probably be ready to clear us for take-off by the time we get back.”

  “Probably so.”

  He spun on his heel to leave.

  “Ethan?”

  He glanced over his shoulder. “Yeah, Kel?”

  “Thanks for the aquamarine.” She leaned her elbows back against the railing and smiled at him.

  Her warm eyes shone with so much gratitude over a cheap little rock, he wanted to detour to Cartier and buy out a display case. She would make a hell of an image in her workout clothes draped with diamonds. “Glad you liked it.”

  Kelly pushed away from the rail and stepped forward. The rail wobbled. Ethan’s stomach clenched.

  He grabbed her elbow. “Hey, Kel, careful there.” He reached behind her to test the rail. “Clyde needs to make some repairs or he could have a major lawsuit on his hands.”

  Kelly shuddered. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Sounds like a plan to me.” Ethan turned back toward the exit tunnel, boards creaking under his feet.

  Kelly’s arm jerked free a second before she screamed, “Ethan!”

  The wooden deck shifted. Broke apart. Started an avalanche slide downward with Kelly slipping out of sight as the ground fell away from under him.

  Chapter 9

  Kelly plummeted down the sloped embankment. Rocks, wood and debris skittered past her. Battered her.

  She grappled for something, anything to halt her fall. Found nothing.

  Kept fighting anyway. She wouldn’t give up until she met ground. Soon, she hoped.

  Dim light flickered from above, barely penetrating the abyss under her. She swallowed a scream. Dust clogged her nose. She wouldn’t let it choke her, too.

  Below, the blanket of black thinned, muddied. The ground rose up to meet her.

  She slammed to a stop.

  Pain jarred through her. Air huffed from her lungs. Rumbling sounded above her as more debris cascaded down. Ethan. She scrambled back. Out of the way.

  “Ethan? Ethan!”

  She peered up toward the glow above. Ethan skidded on his back in a swirl of sliding mud and boards. He landed at her feet with a thud. A fresh shower of debris rained after him.

  Kelly swiped her wrist across her gritty eyes, blinking to clear the dust and adjust to the minuscule light filtering from above.

  “Ethan?” She crawled across jagged rocks and chunks of wood. One knee snagged on a fresh splinter that tore into the designer jeans Eugenie had helped her choose. She ignored the stab of pain. “Are you okay? Talk to me!”

  He groaned. She almost groaned, too, relief slamming through her harder than any of the boards.

  He rolled to his back. “Judas-freaking-priest, Kelly. That hurt.” He pushed up to sit. “You okay?”

  “Fine.” Scared spitless, but damned well not going to show it. “A little banged up, no doubt. But everything’s working.”

  Ethan swept a hand over his dust-encrusted hair. “Same here.”

  Renewed relief punched an exhale from her that stirred a fresh swirl of dust and mustiness. Her eyes attuned enough to discern earthen walls around them in a six-foot-wide cavern with no way out but up. She rubbed her hands along her arms. “What happened back there?”

  He squinted, tipping his face up to where they’d started. An oozing scrape glared along his cheek. “Ground gave way beneath the deck, I’m guessing. We’re lucky there was a slope rather than a sheer drop off.”

  She stared all the way up the steep incline, at least a hundred feet. “Guess we should climb back out.” When he didn’t answer, she turned to him. “Right?”

  Ethan braced one arm on his knee and pointed at the remaining pieces of deck, twisted and hanging on by a splinter. “See that? Too much jarring will loosen it. I don’t want to scare you, but we need to be realistic here. There’s also the chance of starting an avalanche of dirt.”

  The thought of being pummeled, then buried alive, sent smothering fear clogging her senses. Kelly steadied her breathing, and slowly her heartbeat, as well. “What would you do if I wasn’t here with you?”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “What would you do?” she insisted.

  He relented. “Since there’s light, I would climb.”

  She set her teeth and ignored the fear. “Then let’s climb.”

  “Hey, now.” He raised his hands in surrender. “Just because it’s what I would do doesn’t make it the smart move. I’m a reckless idiot and there’s no reason for you to be the same. I could go without you—” Her glare silenced him. “Or we can park our butts here and wait. Clyde will come looking when he sees the rental car’s still out front.”

  “Unless that wasn’t an accident. You said never to trust anyone.”

  Ethan stayed silent.

  Of course he’d know that. Johnny�
�s directions and convenient timing to return to work took on a sinister tone. “I’ll let you decide who’s going up first. But as long as there’s light, we’re climbing. We can spot each other.”

  Ethan studied the slope, then Kelly, and shook his head. “If this wasn’t an accident, who the hell knows how many more traps have been set. We’ll sit tight. Aunt Eugenie doesn’t know details about my job, but she has a number to call if I don’t return. A direct line to Hatch. Once she does that, they’ll activate the tracking chip in my shoulder and locate us.”

  A chilling thought settled in her too-damned-logical brain. “Which shoulder?”

  “What?”

  “Which shoulder is your tracking chip embedded in?”

  “The left.”

  The one with the bruise smeared across it from his tango with the weights. She almost didn’t want to know, but had to ask, “Do you think it’s still working?”

  Ethan’s jaw set as if he was already planning to bar her way up that wall of dirt. “Carla designed it to withstand stress. It’s fine. If not, we’ll just jam your stone under my skin.”

  “I told you not to diss the crystals.” If there was even half an ounce of truth in those mystic possibilities, they’d no doubt maxed their bad luck for the day.

  The light overhead dimmed, flickered. Went dead.

  End of bad luck? Apparently not.

  Just his damned luck. As if it wasn’t bad enough he’d been trapped in an unstable cavern with a ton of debris waiting to crash down on their heads. As if he wasn’t already beating himself up over not finding a way to drag Kelly out of this dank hellhole.

  The fates had decided to punish him by submerging him in complete darkness with Kelly’s voice echoing around him for the past hour.

  Of course if talking kept her calm, then fine. He would keep listening to her recounting of every childhood holiday since birth while they shared peppermint sticks.

  She racked up serious points in his book for grit. Kelly hadn’t complained once of the damp cold that chilled to the bone. And there wasn’t a chance she’d survived that plunge without some injury. His arm was throbbing like a son-of-a-bitch. He was used to shrugging it off, but Kelly—what a job initiation.